Total liquid Ventilation takes another step towards becoming a clinical reality
Lyon and Paris, April 10, 2024 – Orixha announces that it has raised 4 million euros from the European Innovation Council Fund and the French Tech Seed fund, managed on behalf of the French government France 2030 initiative by Bpifrance. This financing will enable Orixha to develop and validate in the clinic its total liquid ventilation technology, starting with resuscitated cardiac arrest patients in critical care.
James Cameron brought the idea of breathing a liquid to the big screen in his film Abyss back in 1989, based on scientific work carried out by Pr. Thomas Shaffer’s team. They had demonstrated that a liquid – perflubron – was 40 times more soluble in oxygen than water, enabling mammals to breathe it without drowning. The dream of liquid ventilation was born, opening clinical perspectives as an alternative to traditional mechanical gas ventilation. In the 1990s, an American company initiated by a French researcher, Pr Jean Riess, develops an experimental partial liquid ventilation solution combining the use of a gaseous ventilator with static instillation of perflubron into the lungs. Following an initial clinical proof of concept, an international transatlantic clinical trial is launched to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome. Unfortunately, the results were disappointing: the rudimentary technology did not allow precise control of fluid volume and pressure in patients’ lungs. Learning from the inherent limitations of partial liquid ventilation, the co-founders of Orixha work on a new liquid ventilation technology, called “total” and not “partial” liquid ventilation. Here, oxygen is loaded into the breathable liquid using a dedicated machine, called a liquid ventilator, and the patient is ventilated solely with this oxygenated liquid.