In 1994, Martine Aliana Rothblatt received the worse news a parent can get. Her young daughter was diagnosed with a fatal combination of orphan disease and pulmonary arterial hypertension. The tragedy inspired Martine to found United Therapeutics in 1996, a biotechnology company specializing in developing life saving therapies for lung and organ transplant patients. As explained on the company website, “Thousands of patients die every year waiting for an organ transplant due to the severe shortage of donors, and the time-sensitive supply of compatible and usable organs. Supply is simply not meeting the critical level of demand.”

With primary offices in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United Therapeutics aims to disrupt this shortage with manufacturing technologies like 3D bioprinting, pig-to-human xenotransplantation, and a novel way of transporting organs to waiting patients. On October 11, 2021, United Therapeutics announced that they had successfully used a drone in the first ever transportation of a human lung from Toronto Western Hospital to a patient at Toronto General Hospital. With no traffic, the travel time between the two hospitals is roughly 10 minutes. The drone was able to complete the mission in about 6 minutes.

Collaborating with aviation specialists, Transport Canada’s Civil Aviation (TCAA), engineers, and medical professionals, United Therapeutics spent 18 months perfecting the 6 minute flight. The first step was to design a case that could safely carry the lung. The case had to be light enough for the drone to fly, while still being able to maintain the lung’s temperature and protect it from the drone’s vibrations. The next step was to coordinate a flight plan taking into account the complexities of navigating a busy city environment. On the day of the flight, the doctors, drone team, and United Therapeutics technicians spent 12 hours getting ready.

The organ had to be safely prepared. The drone had to be fully inspected, tested, and charged. The takeoff and landing sites needed to be secured. Communications with TCAA had to be established to notify any hospital helicopters operating in the area. Every detail had to be checked and double checked because as Mikael Cardinal, VP of E-Aviation Organ Delivery Systems at United Therapeutics, said, “There’s so many things that are happening in downtown Toronto on the airspace side, on the ground, it’s not a simple thing. And we want to do it, you know, in the safest way possible because we are flying a life.”

The mission was a success and the patient received their transplant. And as the Director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Center at UHN Dr. Shaf Keshavjee said, “It can’t all happen in a petri dish, it can’t all happen in the lab. So, you really have to make it real, you have to make it accessible to patients.” Using drones to transport organs is enabling that accessibility. This mission is just the start, a stepping stone, of United Therapeutics’s foray into drone enabled organ transplantation.

Currently, United Therapeutics is working with eVTOL drone manufacturers like eHang for organ deliveries. Initially developed to address urban mobility with drone technology, eHang’s pilot optional drones are ideal organ transplant vehicles. They have the potential to travel up to 200 miles without needing a dedicated pilot. An organ harvested in Maryland can be autonomously transported to New York in under 2 hours at a far less cost than a helicopter and with zero carbon emissions. “Ultimately,” Martine said, “we plan to have drone aircraft deliver lungs, and hearts, and kidneys throughout all of North America.”

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