Chemical Cocktail Keeps Resurrected Heart Alive for 10 Days Outside of Body

The "Somah" solution could preserve organs for transplant in a state of suspended animation

By Jeremy Hsu Posted 05.04.2010 at 10:30 am 8 Comments

Somah Cocktail A pig's heart sits in a solution of Somah, which can preserve organs for up to 10 days Harvard University

Staying alive on the organ transplant waiting list could get a bit easier with organs that last longer outside the body. That's the hope of Harvard startup Hibergenica, which looks to commercialize a liquid solution that preserves the metabolism of hearts and livers for about 10 days, Technology Review reports.

The seemingly miraculous "Somah" solution comes from Hemant Thatte, an assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Harvard Medical School and the VA Boston Healthcare System. He devised a cocktail of 21 chemical compounds which successfully preserved pig organs by slowing cell deterioration, and all without needing to lower the temperature of the preservation system.

Not only that, but Thatte's team also managed to actually restart a pig's heart in the lab by building an artificial circulatory system to support it. The Somah solution then helped keep it in a sort of stasis for 10 days.

"We're the first laboratory in the world to restart the heart 24 hours after death," Thatte told PopSci.

Existing preservation solutions can only preserve hearts for four hours, and livers for 12 hours. Extending that period to 10 days means that patients have access to a wider pool of less time-sensitive organs, because organs could be shipped from places as far away as Hawaii or other overseas locations. And that could potentially cut back on the more than 6,000 patients who died waiting for organs in 2008.

Much hinges upon the next step taken by the Harvard business students who formed Hibergenica. They plan to transplant Somah-preserved organs from pigs to other pigs and gauge survival rates, before they kick off a year of human trials and finally approach the Food and Drug Administration for approval. Kidneys and livers would be first up for testing, followed by heart and lung transplants.

Success with this route could have a huge impact on organ transplantation. It would expand the organ donor pool by easing the time constraint on an organ's out-of-body experience, never mind the genetically-engineered pig hearts five or 10 years down the road. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this down the road, even as we ooh and aah over the next equivalent of a full facial transplant.

[via Technology Review]

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8 Comments

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hellkeeper6

05/04/10 at 11:21 am

this is great news for the people needing a transplant

but how long could this make my brain survive in a glass jar ?

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HerbertWest

05/04/10 at 12:20 pm

While this is an interesting scientific advance, and I applaud those involved, the article overlooks what seems to me a crucial implication of such technology. Those given organs which have been preserved in this manner, and then 'resurrected' may well suffer from the symptoms common to those who have themselves died and returned from the dead, notably, a tendency toward severe skin problems, and a fixation on, and hunger for, human flesh. (See Romero, et al. Night of the Living Dead, Journal of Applied Zombification, 1968) The impact on society emerging from the need to provide sustenance for such individuals must be considered before this is put to wider use.

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BubbaGump

05/04/10 at 12:45 pm

To hellkeeper6, consider this, if the eyes are the windows to the soul and all who you are is in your brain, perhaps you brain is already in a glass jar and you just didn't realize it..........hmmm.

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hellkeeper6

05/04/10 at 12:55 pm

bubbagump, does that mean you're a figment of my imagination ?
if so, i also imagine you to be a beautifull woman who's very interested in me. Altough i fear that all the hallucinogens will cause that to be just a pipedream.

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CDales1004

05/04/10 at 2:49 pm

A cocktail of 21 chemicals?
Sounds like a new version of a "Long Island Iced Tea" to me.

Its interesting and has potential to help others, but I wonder what kind of affect the chemicals have on the organ after prolonged exposure.

btw hellkeeper6...awesome image

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livandletlive

05/04/10 at 4:10 pm

herbertwest. nice.

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HazMatt

05/04/10 at 7:07 pm

Very cool stuff! I always wondered why they couldn't pump some kind of oxygenated nutrient solution through organs to keep them alive while waiting to meet their new body. I'm sure it was a lot more complex to make it work than I can imagine though. Nice work!

Also, HerbertWest -- You are my hero.

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jfh1864

05/09/10 at 8:50 pm

All of life seems to be some chemical cocktail...but why do chemical names have twenty sylables but leave you speaking in one sylable words?