A new device could be on the way to provide patients a safer alternative to typical mechanical ventilators to help them “breathe” if they have damaged or diseased lungs. This new microfluidic machine, created by Draper Laboratory’s, recreates critical structures and functions of an actual lung, removing carbon dioxide from the blood and replacing it with oxygen through the use of a collection of porous membranes. One alternative to the traditional mechanical ventilation method is ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and has typically been a life saving measure only employed when mechanical ventilation doesn’t help. When people are criticslly ill it is always a risk that they will exposed to acute respiratory distress syndrome where fluid builds up in the lungs. Using a mechanical respirator in this situation Jeff Borenstein says, is similar to “exercising a broken arm”. It prevents the lungs from healing and the process itself can cause trauma to the lung tissue. Giving the lungs no time to recover runs the risk of subjecting the patient to pneumonia.

ECMO works much the same as this new artificial lung however there are a number of drawbacks, highly specialised people are required to run one and blood clots are a constant threat. Because the typical ECMO machine is unlike a natural lung, the blood ends up clotting inside the machine. To overcome this the patient needs to take high doses of anti-coagulants which have their own sets of complications; internal bleeding being the main problem.

While this new microfluidic machine is based on this same technology, what sets it apart from the typical ECMO is that it mimics an actual lung and the environment is more hospitable to the blood circulating through it, resulting in a lower risk of clotting. It contains a “three-dimensional branching structure” that is akin to the branching that occurs in a pair of lungs down to capillary level. It also reduces the space between the blood and oxygen, creating a more efficient exchanges of gases. These techniques along with other patented the people at Draper managed to speed up the previous systems blood flow rates ten times over reaching 100 milliliters per minute with bovine blood. The next step is to scale the system up to a couple of liters per minute without increasing the risk of clotting.