2026-09-21 from ctvnews.ca

Human trials start next year in Toronto on a gene and stem cell therapy that could make a transplanted lung “look more like itself,” a first step toward what Dr. Shaf Keshavjee calls the ultimate goal: an organ that is you so that your body doesn’t reject it.

Keshavjee, Surgeon-in-Chief of the Sprott Department of Surgery and director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at UHN, is building on the Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP) platform developed at Toronto General Hospital, which keeps donor lungs breathing outside the body so they can be assessed and repaired.

“We interrogate them, we can assess them, and we can fix them with gene therapy and stem cells,” he said in an interview with Your Morning. The donor lungs are placed inside of a protective dome and supplied all critical components so it can breathe on its own for 12 hours.

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