Laura Niklason, M.D., Ph.D., has spent the past 15 years in the
lab developing ways to build new arteries using tissue
engineering techniques, but as an anesthesiologist who works in
the intensive care unit, she always had another idea rolling
around in the back of her head. Niklason, professor of
anesthesiology and biomedical engineering, was troubled that a
large number of her patients suffered damage to the lungs,
organs that simply don’t fix themselves very well after injury
or serious illness. Hundreds of thousands of Americans die from
lung disease each year, and the only effective treatment for
severe cases is transplantation. Unfortunately, this expensive
procedure is associated with high mortality and is also limited
by an extreme shortage of donor organs. An alternative solution
is to create synthetic lungs, but past attempts to do so have
failed because the lungs, with networks of branching airways and
vasculature, are so spatially complex, says Niklason. “She and
her research team took a leap forw