
Everything from food aspiration to an asthma attack to heart failure can cause a patient to die from asphyxia, or lack of oxygen. For more than a decade, the Translational Research Laboratory (TRL) of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Heart Center has been pursuing a dream: tiny, oxygen-filled bubbles that can be safely injected directly into the blood, resuscitating patients who can’t breathe.
The lab’s first generation of bubbles were made with a fatty acid, but the lipid shells weren’t stable enough for long-term storage or clinical use. The bubbles popped open too easily. …