Grant: Project Grant

Few therapies are available to patients who are suffering end-stage heart failure. Cardiac transplantation remains the gold-standard therapeutic intervention for those patients with end-stage heart failure. Donation after Circulatory Death or DCD means that organ donation happens after the heart stops beating after withdrawal of life support. This is in contrast to donation after brain death where donors have lost brain function, but the heart is still beating and blood circulates in the body. This type of organ donation is currently the standard in Canada and many other countries, but donation after brain death is limited by the availability of suitable donors. In DCD, the "non-heart beating" donors have suffered circulatory arrest and organ retrieval should ideally start as soon as possible after circulatory death. However, for the donated heart to function well as graft in a putative recipient, it has to be supplied with oxygen and nutrients as quickly as possible after circulatory death to resume normal function without irreversible damage. Our research addresses the use of a novel therapy with clinically approved medication and out-of-the-body heart perfusion in a beating state on a specifically designed apparatus to provide optimized heart protection during the bridging time between heart procurement from the donor and transplantation into a recipient. The data generated from our studies will provide the foundations for a clinical program that will expand the donor heart pool for transplantation.