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Artificial Womb Could Give Premature Babies Extra Time To Develop

PHILADELPHIA (CBSNewYork) -- A stunning new development could help extremely premature babies survive -- it's an artificial womb designed to give preemies a few extra weeks to develop.

As CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez reports, the process is still highly experimental but has already begun testing with animals.

Premature infants weighing as little as a pound are now hooked to ventilators, monitors, and other machines inside incubators so their lungs and other organs can more fully develop.

At the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, doctors are aiming for a gentler solution.

"The challenging age we're trying to offset is that 23-week, 24-week baby who is faced with such a challenge of adapting to life outside of the uterus on dry land, breathing air, when they're not supposed to be there yet," Dr. Emily Partridge from CHOP said.

Researchers at CHOP are testing a device that would give those preemies a couple of extra weeks in an artificial womb.

"It's meant in some ways to swaddle and keep the fetus supported physically the way it would be in the uterus," Dr. Partridge said.

The technology was tested on fetal lambs, whose development is similar to humans. A bag is filled with lab-made amniotic fluid that the fetus inhales and exhales as it normally would in the womb as the heart pumps blood through the umbilical cord into a kind of artificial lung outside the bag.

"It's a fluidic incubator, so the infant is re-immersed in an amniotic fluid and the infant will survive inside the biobag with the oxygenator on the outside for a period of up to three or four weeks," Dr. Marcus Davey from CHOP said.

The eight fetal lambs that were tested in the device seemed to develop as they normally would in womb, some even grew a little wool. Researchers hope one day the same technology could work for human babies.

"With each week of advanced staging gestation, the morbidity and the mortality progressively decrease," Dr. Alan Flake from CHOP said.

The researchers say they're not aiming to extend viability earlier than the current mark of 23 weeks, as the goal is to help extreme preemies develop more normally and with fewer health issues.

Human testing is still three to five years away, although the CHOP team is already in discussions with the Food and Drug Administration.

Roughly one in ten babies are born with some degree of prematurity in the United States, CBS2 reports.

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