Eric Brouwer, Chief Scientific Officer of SQI Diagnostics, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how they are building a machine to increase the supply and efficiency of donor lungs for transplants.

Cheddar Innovates

New Machine to Increase Supply of Donor Lungs for Transplants

Welcome back to cheddar innovates brought to you by curiosity stream according to the United Network for organ sharing over 10% of new patients on the lung transplant waiting list are on that list because of covid. But organs are always in short supply. And donor lungs in particular come with a huge set of logistical challenges. That is why our next guest is developing a first of its kind machine that could increase the supply of donor lungs available for transplant joining us now is eric brower chief scientific officer at SQ. I diagnostics erIC I only have like three minutes with you. So I want to kind of run through some of the things that fascinate me here. How does the technology work? And what is the capability in terms of what it's actually gonna be able to do? Yeah. So the machine takes a lung and essentially places it on a bypass system. So it's artificial breathing and and the lungs still living. And when that's happening we can actually measure a lot of things that are great concern to the transplant team uh namely inflammation which caused many, many complications with the recipient. So we take a look at inflammatory proteins And be able to measure them basically when they're high, there's danger for the transplant when they're low. We're good to go. And this helps significantly if the number of donor organs that can actually be transplanted, only 20-25% currently are being used. So this is a significant advance to be able to shorten the recipient list and I have a better outcome for a recipient. And that is so much more necessary now because as we alluded to earlier, COVID-19 has had a pretty significant impact. Can you talk a little bit about that? You know that impact on organ donor supply and lung transplants in particular? Yeah. On the donor side the donors have kind of remained constant but it's been very very complicated with the screening procedures. The bigger thing is. Tencent of transplants last year in the U. S. Were to cook people with Covid. And so the recipient list is getting longer. There's more people needing one. What goes into deciding if a lung is is going to be suitable for for transplantation. And how important is it you know in terms of time that consideration and then execution. Yeah. So the the organs are harvested at a center and they're usually flown to the transplant center uh there you have a couple of hours to assess whether the organs are are viable for transplant. The surgeons have to make some quick decisions. A lot of it's based on their qualitative they poke. They prod, they look at the color of the lungs. But really what's got here is precision medicine. Being able to look at the molecular level that predicts the outcome with the transplant recipient and eric really quickly before I have to let you go here. What are the next steps to to getting this technology into the hands of hospitals and doctors for actual use. Yeah. We're running a lot of clinical studies right now, um, speaking to the FDA and getting FDA approval for that and uh, building up the, um, evidence that we have that this is gonna make a big difference in transplant erIC. So glad we were able to get you back on for a few seconds here. Eric brauer, chief scientific officer at SQ. I. Diagnostics.