[Explanation] With the development of medical technology, artificial cornea, artificial skin, and artificial blood vessels have come out one after another.
Artificial heart is one of the most complex and sophisticated medical devices, and is called the "jewel in the crown" of cardiovascular medical devices.
[Explanation] Xu Boying is 38 years old, born in Yancheng, Jiangsu, and born in Tainan, Taiwan. She is a dual female doctorate from Cambridge University in England and Aachen University of Technology in Germany.
The international research team led by her has built the first in-vitro magnetic levitation artificial heart production line in mainland China.
Recently, Xu Boying told a reporter from China News Agency about her story.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
In more than three years, we have advanced our first product, the external artificial heart, to the clinical stage, which is very incredible internationally.
Because the extracorporeal artificial heart is a product with a particularly high degree of interdisciplinary and particularly difficult research and development, the average international experience takes more than 8 years.
[Explanation] In a very clean laboratory, staff wearing masks, goggles, and clean clothes carefully raised a fist-sized metal device shaped like a gear for a close look.
The gear center is wrapped with a magnetic levitation device. The center speed can reach 4000 to 6000 revolutions per minute. This is the core part of the extracorporeal artificial heart.
Its function is to allow patients to receive "heartbeat" support from outside the body during the golden rescue period.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
Our first product, an in vitro artificial heart, has now entered the clinical stage and is waiting for patients to be enrolled in the group. It has passed the ethical review and also satisfied the procedures.
[Explanation] "Post-80s" Xu Boying is actually a "second generation".
In the 1980s, her father started his own business in Taiwan, making electrical systems for industrial sewing.
During winter and summer vacations, she often went to her father's Shanghai factory to fiddle with circuit boards and solder electronic components.
When she was older, she began to help her father draw design drawings and write code.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
He (father) said that your language is already very good and that you should strengthen your weaker abilities as a person, so he encouraged me to study science and engineering. I believed it at the time.
Later, when I was admitted to the university, I chose the Department of Physics because of this, and (again) went to the United States to study for a master's degree in mechanical engineering.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
Then I went to the UK to study for a Ph.D. (study) in electrical engineering at Cambridge University in the UK.
My mentor was an authoritative expert in the field of motor design. At that time, my other mentor was a clinical cardiologist. When the two of them were sitting together for afternoon tea one day, they suddenly thought that in the early stages of heart failure patients, if If you can put an artificial heart with such an ultra-small, very low trauma, it is possible to curb the process of heart failure.
Then my tutor saw that I had studied physics before, and then had a background in mechanics and control. He thought I was particularly suitable for this project, so he recruited me.
When I heard it, I thought it was very interesting, artificial heart, it also sounded very cool.
[Explanation] After an opportunity for academic exchange, she was invited to the Aachen University of Technology in Germany to continue her studies.
Here, she completed the "post-stage" work such as the verification and clinical evaluation of the ultra-small artificial heart system.
Coincidentally, the two universities stepped down, which is equivalent to doing the "full process" of artificial heart products.
[Explanation] In 2013, considering that his parents in Shanghai are getting older and Suzhou is very close to Shanghai, 31-year-old Xu Boying accepted an invitation from Suzhou to become a professor at Soochow University.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
After I returned to China, at many academic conferences, there were clinical doctors who said that they had seen such auxiliary devices during their studies abroad, and he felt that they were needed in China.
He said, since you are in this field, is it possible for you to realize it?
Then I thought to myself, I think it is possible.
Entrepreneurship is a very good way to achieve it, and it can be the fastest to transform these technologies into the clinic.
[Explanation] When developing a magnetic levitation device for an external artificial heart, the team experienced countless failures.
In traditional artificial heart pumps, the flow-through parts of the pump will break the red blood cells in the blood when it is working. Once this "crushed" unhealthy blood returns to the human body, hemolysis is prone to occur, and in severe cases, it can endanger life.
The magnetic levitation device can solve this problem well, but the independent research and development process has twists and turns.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
One night, because we were too depressed, we all went up to play badminton, and only our British chief engineer was still programming and debugging there. Then, suddenly we received a call saying, "Floating."
We rushed down from upstairs, and we were so happy, and then we still had some mechanical engineers crying.
[Explanation] With the efforts of the team, she led the team to complete the first in-vitro magnetic levitation artificial heart engineering prototype in mainland China, realizing large animal experiments and achieving expected results.
China's first external magnetic levitation artificial heart is expected to be available at the end of 2022.
The interventional artificial heart is also expected to be available in 2023.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
The external artificial heart, like our heart, is the power source of the entire circulatory system.
We plan to load different organ modules on such a power source.
Artificial lung is our first step into the field, which is equivalent to support for respiratory failure. Then we will add other organ modules to form an overall in vitro life support platform.
Provide patients with different types of organ assistance, allowing patients to transition to rehabilitation, or transition to other (treatment) methods.
[Commentary] "Heart" girl Xu Boying's office has various "hearts".
In the conspicuous position of the bookcase, there is a doctoral cap of Aachen University of Technology in Germany: a creative artificial heart "model" made of barbed wire, propellers, folding fans, and photos of German football stars.
[Concurrent] Xu Boying
We hope to become a world-class (company) that provides patients and users with the most valuable technology in the field of life support technology.
Zhang Chuanming reports from Suzhou, Jiangsu
Editor in charge: [Sun Jingbo]