Home Department: Biology
Mentor: Joseph Shrager (Cardiothoracic Surgery)

“Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP) and Ex Vivo Heart Perfusion (EVHP) System for Rats”

An Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP)/Ex Vivo Heart Perfusion (EVHP) System for Rats is necessary to establish them as a viable model for transplantation research. Over the summer, Taeil Matthew will design and improve these systems while performing rat surgeries. This will allow evaluation of organ function and testing of experimental recovery and treatments before application to larger animals or clinical settings. Currently, the standard with animal studies on EVLP/EVHP has been large animals, such as pigs. However, small animal models like rats would offer more timely, less costly, and less labor intensive studies, greatly accelerating our research on organ transplantation.