Scientists Engineer “Universal Donor” Lungs

Scientists have devised a way to change the blood type of donated human lungs, a step toward easing the major challenge in getting organs to the patients who need them the most.

Matching blood types is one of the most important steps in transplantation; a mismatched organ will be destroyed by the body’s immune system within days. This immune warfare is triggered by specifically shaped sugars, or antigens, on the surface of blood cells, blood vessels, and organ tissue.

Now, researchers led by Marcelo Cypel, the surgical director at the University Health Network Transplant Program in Toronto, have used a combination of enzymes to snip away these antigens in type A lungs, converting the organs to type O, the universal donor blood type. Today, 55% of donor lungs are universal, type O. Converting type A donor organs to type O could expand the universal donor pool from 55% to more than 80%, Cypel and his colleagues reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Right now, matching organs to donors can be a wasteful business. Because type O organs can go to anyone and are thus in high demand, patients with type O blood (who can only receive type O organs), must wait the longest for organs and are 20% more likely to die while waiting than patients of other blood types, according to 2019 research published in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. Sometimes, organs must be discarded if there are no nearby patients with the right blood type, Cypel says. “If you could have...