4 years ago, the success story of the Pulmonary Tissue Bank of the Lung Research Group at BREATH, the Hanoverian location of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), began with the processing of the fresh explant lung of a patient with advanced pulmonary fibrosis.

About 150 lungs are transplanted annually at Hannover Medical School (MHH). The explanted lungs are of considerable scientific potential. At many other clinics, the diseased organs exlanted during a transplantation are prepared by fixation in formalin for the diagnostic work-up of the pathology. Although this treatment is sufficient for clarifying the underlying pathology, for more in-depth research questions, the organs are lost. Direct reprocessing of the freshly explanted lungs, on the other hand, offers the opportunity to perform not only routine diagnostics but also to generate tissue cultures for research.

Through the intensive cooperation between the teams of Prof. Dr. med. Danny Jonigk, Senior Physician at the Institute of Pathology, Prof. Dr. med. Gregor Warnecke, Senior Consulting Physician at the Department of HTTG Surgery and Prof. Dr. med. Jens Gottlieb, Senior Physician at the Clinic for Pulmonology, and sophisticated logistics this is exactly what is possible at BREATH. If a lung transplantation is scheduled at MHH, the employees of the Lung Research Group will be informed immediately. Immediately after removal, the explanted lungs are received by the pathologists and processing of the fresh organ is begun within a maximum of thirty minutes after explantation. In total it only takes an hour between explantation and final processing. Coordinated by Dr. med. Peter Braubach, the members of the Lung Research Group are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to process the explanted lungs. If required, all diagnostic options of modern pathology can be used directly. The infrastructure provided in this form is unique worldwide. A few days ago, the 500th lung was freshly processed.

After handover of an explanted lung, the actual work of the pathologists begins. Depending on the cooperation partners’ research question, the tissue is then processing. The requirements are as diverse and specific as the research questions themselves. To date, there are cooperations with 27 local, but also national and international partners.

Especially for the research projects within the framework of the German Center for Lung Research the work of the research group lung research is invaluable. Cross-site cooperation exists here e.g. with the DZL site association UGMLC in the areas of pulmonary hypertension and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. In addition, several working groups within MHH and the Fraunhofer ITEM regularly receive lung tissue for research projects in the fields of asthma and allergy, acute respiratory failure, cystic fibrosis, COPD, end-stage lung disease, diffuse pulmonary parenchyma and pulmonary hypertension. The program is currently being extended to resected tissues from lung tumors for closer connection to the DZL research area lung cancer.

Due to the high number of lung transplants at the MHH fresh samples of very rare diseases can be obtained regularly. The researchers led by Prof. Jonigk use this to investigate their own questions on rare lung diseases. The research focus of the Lung Research Group lies on chronic dysfunction of lung transplants and interstitial lung diseases. For his work Prof. Jonigk recently recruited the prestigious and highly endowed Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.

The lung research group of the institute for pathology is part of BREATH, Hannover's partner site of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL).
 
For questions about the Lung Research Group at BREATH, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Danny Jonigk
Institute of Pathology
Hannover Medical School
Tel .: 0511 532-4490

Text: BREATH / CD
Picture: MHH / Tom Figiel