University Times

Pitt trustees took a break from budgets, reorganizations and quasi-endowments to hear about a medical wonder in the making.

Bartley P. Griffith, director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)'s McGowan Center for Artificial Organ Development, reported on the center's efforts to create the first permanent, portable replacement for a human heart: the University of Pittsburgh Artificial Heart, also known as the Streamliner.

"We will take the technology available to us and we will change the face of artificial heart technology forever," Griffith said.

The Streamliner will consist of a continuously spinning rotor the size of a D battery, housed in a smooth conduit attached to a patient's blood vessels.

In contrast to present-day, bellows-like mechanisms that imitate the workings of a real heart, the Streamliner will pump blood with a continuously spinning, 15,000-rpm turbine rotor. The rotor will be magnetically suspended within its conduit to minimize the chances of blood clotting and mechanical breakdown. Because the rotor produces a continuous flow of blood, Streamliner patients would have no pulse.

The Streamliner could be ready for clinical use in three-to-five years – "with the right funding," Griffith estimated. With help from Pitt's Office of Technology Transfer, McGowan Center researchers are forming a company called Streamcore to market the device.

Besides commerce, the continuing shortage of donor organs is the driving force behind efforts to produce new artificial organs, Griffith said.

The McGowan Center is about three years from developing a new artificial lung to replace today's crude devices, he reported. The Pittsburgh Artificial Lung (PAL) already is delivering oxygen to the bloodstreams of laboratory animals. Center researchers also are working on artificial kidneys, livers and pancreases.

In 1985, UPMC became just the second medical center in the world to implant the Jarvik-7 artificial heart as a time-buying bridge between a patient's natural heart and a transplant. Griffith criticized Jarvik-style pumps as "bulky, too-large, difficult-to-fit, clot-producing, infection-ridden mechanical devices that can only be used for short periods of time." In contrast, a process called inductive coupling will power the Streamliner. By feeding electrical power painlessly across the skin, the process eliminates the infection risk of implanted wires. The device also will contain rechargeable batteries for use when AC power is unavailable – when the patient is bathing, for example, or exercising.

The Streamliner rotor was designed on a computer. McGowan Center researchers created the initial design, which computer analyses showed to be "lousy," according to Griffith. The analyses indicated large areas in the design where blood flow would have been sluggish, thus encouraging blood clotting. But a subsequent series of computer redesigns removed the problem areas. What the computer came up with was a completely revolutionary design," Griffith said. "No way would any engineer have come up with this particular design based on intuitiveness." The McGowan Center opened in 1992, thanks largely to a $1 million endowment from MCI Communications founder William McGowan and his wife, Sue Gin. A heart attack in 1987 nearly killed McGowan. When he was told he needed a heart transplant, he did research on transplant centers and chose UPMC. McGowan was hours away from receiving a Jarvik-7 when a real heart was found.

Following a successful transplant, McGowan and his wife donated the money for artificial heart research at UPMC. McGowan died in 1992 of heart failure, but his family continues to support the center. Other funding sources include UPMC and state and federal grants, Griffith said.

In 1993, the center moved into the Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering along Second Avenue in Hazelwood.

The center offers training and job opportunities to Pitt students as well as recent graduates, Griffith told trustees. Thanks to the McGowan Center, he said, "there is absolutely no reason that bright bioengineers from Carnegie Mellon and from the University of Pittsburgh in the future will have to leave our area. There will be a home, there will be a purpose and there will be a mission. And hopefully, there will be seed funding to keep them active and to keep their bright ideas from perishing behind some type of industrial need that really won't speak to the mission of patient care."

– Bruce Steele