Top US universities, including Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, Carnegie Mellon and Cornell will share a four-year, $87 million grant from the Department of Defence Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) to develop an artificial lung platform for those patients who couldn’t do a lung transplant. The portable device would take the place of ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) system, a platform housed in a hospital’s ICU that can temporarily take over the functions of the body’s heart and lungs. Matthew Bacchetta, a professor of surgery and adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt, who is leading the research, said that their key focus is on managing chronic lung diseases in an enduring destination therapy.