A shortfall of thousands of organs for desperate transplant patients in Massachusetts is spurring cutting-edge research by Bay State scientists — including of genetically modified and engineered tissue.
"The big motivation of the kind of research we're doing is the need for more organs," said Ali Khademhosseinir, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "We want to try and eliminate this need."
Currently, in Massachusetts, 3,242 patients are on a wait list for an organ transplant. As they wait, patients helplessly see their conditions deteriorate with no guarantee that they'll ever make it to the top of the list.
"It's really a waiting game. And there are people who die while waiting," said Dr. Parsia Vagefi, a transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital. "For a large metropolitan area like Boston, there are more people who need organs. It really just comes down to supply and demand."
Paul McDonough, 67, has been on the wait list for a new liver for over a year.
"From what I could tell, I could be anywhere from six to 12 months out," said the Burlington attorney, who is battling liver cancer. "That's pre-supposing that I don't develop any new tumors or a re-emergence of old tumors, which could bump me off the list."
As a Massachusetts resident, McDonough is in what is known by transplant banks as "Region 1," along with Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The country is divided into 11 regions that determine how organs are allocated — and organs that become available in a specific zone are given to patients within that same area. There are currently 5,148 patients waiting to receive an organ among the five states in Region 1 — with the vast majority in the Bay State. In New England, about 265 died awaiting a transplant in 2013, according to Sean Fitzpatrick, director of public affairs for the New England Organ Bank.
The local shortage is merely a snapshot of a nationwide problem that claims the lives of about 18 people every day, said Fitzpatrick. But Boston's status as a health care mecca, in combination with its dense population, makes the problem particularly glaring in this region, said Joel Newman of the United Network for Organ Sharing.
"Boston is a concentration of people from many other areas," Newman said. "There are a number of health programs in the Boston area, so people come from other countries and around the country for care here."
That rich medical environment is also serving as an incubator for doctors to explore novel technologies that would allow surgeons to cut human donors out of the picture entirely — and eliminate the waiting list.
MGH is researching "xenotransplantation" — the use of animal organs, primarily from pigs — through genetic modification.
Khademhosseinir's program at Brigham and Women's Hospital is exploring the engineering of organs using a combination of living cells and a degradable foam, which would eventually break down and allow the cells to grow an organ in its place.
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