Marcos Galasso, MD, a thoracic surgeon who is currently pursuing a PhD degree at Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, has recently published the article “Inactivating hepatitis C virus in donor lungs using light therapies during normothermic ex vivo lung perfusion” as first author. The paper was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications on January 2019.

Galasso, who attended med school and also received Thoracic Surgery training at the School of Medical Sciences (SMS), University of Campinas, was invited in 2015 to be part of Dr. Marcelo Cypel’s Lab team, at Latner Thoracic Surgery Laboratories, in Toronto, Canada. He is particularly interested in Lung Transplantation, Ex-Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP) and New Technologies and Devices for Organ Preservation.

In the publication, he found that light-based therapies, such as Ultraviolet C and Photodynamic Therapy effectively inactivate Hepatitis C viruses from HCV+ donor lungs. Additionally, the therapies described were proven to be safe, in a context of when tested in a pre-clinical large animal model for EVLP and Lung Transplant. If successful in the clinical scenario, HCV+ donors could be added to the donor pool, leading to a big impact on the organ donation offer. The publication was also selected to be part of the Nature Microbiology Community Blog.

In 2016, Dr. Galasso was also invited to be part of the EVLP staff team at Toronto General Hospital. The Toronto Lung transplant program is the largest in the world, with nearly 200 lung transplants per year. Additionally, the Toronto EVLP program recently reached the important landmark of 500 cases done, becoming the world leader in this procedure.

Galasso also accepted an invitation to spend two more years in the Toronto General hospital, starting in July 2019, to work as clinical fellow for General Thoracic Surgery and Lung Transplant/Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO). During this time, his focus will be minimally invasive surgery, EBUS, Lung Transplantation and ECMO.

Read the full paper here.

Read the Nature Microbiology post here.