Throughout my career, my clinical and investigational work has focused on the treatment of heart and lung end-stage disease. I have approached that task by combining heart and lung transplantation with the developments in total artificial heart, ventricular assist devices, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), ambulatory ECMO, and cardiac xenotransplantation.
Since 1986, I have been continuously funded as a principal investigator by the NIH. Work on an ambulatory artificial lung, first funded in 1990, has earned more than $25 million in NIH support. The device, once imagined on a napkin, is now cleared by the FDA for clinical use, and the roll-out of the Breethe system designed for home use began in 2021. The work on this system evolved with clinical input from experiences in patients with end-stage respiratory distress but also included multidisciplinary input from a broad array of experts in the bioengineering aspects of the project.
In 2018, I became the clinical director for the Program in Xenotransplantation. The ongoing focus of that program has led to successful outcomes for genetically engineered swine hearts when placed in baboons. Success of the program (survival up to nine months in baboons) led to clinical implementation (the first successful cardiac xenotransplant occurred January 7, 2022).
Throughout my career, I have been a mentor of cardiothoracic surgical trainees and post doc engineers.