Meredith Cohn - It looks like a rolling suitcase, a mask and some tubes, but for some people who can’t breathe properly, the device will mean freedom.

Those with damaged lungs who are waiting for a transplant, too sick for surgery or just temporarily injured normally have to stay hooked up to bulky machinery in a hospital to stay alive. But a new invention, developed by engineers and doctors from the University of Maryland, means they could soon return home and go about more of their lives.

“Grandpa can come [along] now,” said Dr. Bartley P. Griffith, a professor of transplant surgery in the university’s School of Medicine, about the artificial lung support device he helped create and commercialize before it was bought by Johnson & Johnson.

 

It’s the kind of innovation that University of Maryland officials expect to foster in a new center in the University of Maryland BioPark, where faculty, students and researchers from the College Park and Baltimore campuses will share labs and other space.

The center is the latest effort by the university to develop and commercialize technology that officials say will save and improve people’s lives. It will also become part of the region’s rising biotech industry, which taps into local universities such as Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, as well as nonprofits and private companies, to develop and market cutting-edge technology.

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