Skip to main content

In the future, drone taxis may deliver manufactured organs to hospitals

eHang 184, most expensive drones
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Earlier this year, Chinese UAV company Ehang unveiled their 184 drone, the world’s first autonomous flying taxi designed to transport people from one location to another. Today, biotech leader United Therapeutics announced it was partnering with Ehang to adapt the 184 drone for the transportation of organs instead of passengers. This new system would be called MOTH, short for Manufactured Organ Transport Helicopter system (MOTH). The proposed organ taxi plan is ambitious, but if Lung Biotechnology can pull it off, it has the potential to change the organ donor market in the US.

Lung Biotechnology, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, is known for its lung manufacturing technology, which it developed to help patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension and other end-stage lung diseases. The list of critically ill patients requiring a lung transplant to live is very long, while the supply of available organs from donors is extremely scarce. To help meet this need, Lung Biotechnology has developed methods of creating lungs and other organs using stem cells and xenotransplantation techniques.

Recommended Videos

To get its manufactured organs to patients, Lung Biotechnology wants to use Ehang’s 184 drones. The company hopes to station these MOTH rotorcraft at its manufacturing facilities, making them available for the immediate transport of recently produced biomaterial. Once loaded with the organ samples, each drone can be preprogrammed to fly to a nearby hospital that can use the organ for transplant. This fast and efficient transport is essential as it allows Lung Biotchnology to provide hospitals with viable organs precisely when they are needed. “We anticipate delivering hundreds of organs a day, which means that the MOTH system will help save not only tens of thousands of lives but also many millions of gallons of aviation transport gasoline annually,” said Lung Biotechnology Chairman and CEO Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Lung Biotechnology is optimistic that the company will receive the necessary permissions to begin its MOTH operation. These certifications include the approval of the MOTH rotorcraft by the Federal Aviation Administration and approval of the company’s xenotransplantation organ products by the Food and Drug Administration.

Kelly Hodgkins
Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…
Ram says its new midsize truck will surprise
2025 Dodge Ram 1500 REV Front

While an appetite for smaller pickups has been growing in recent years, Ram has been cultivating the art of suspense about delivering the goods to the U.S. market.

The Stellantis-owned brand has let it be known that a smaller pickup than the full-size Ram 1500 is in the works. But the brand seems keen to keep the suspense alive by limiting the amount of clues it provides.

Read more
Might be time to buy EVs, laptops, and smartphones ahead of Trump tariffs
evs laptops smartphones price hike tariffs download 4

Besides the traditional holiday shopping season, there might be good reasons to preempt some planned purchases between now and January 20: Price hikes are widely expected to be passed onto U.S. consumers should the incoming Trump administration carry out its plans to impose across-the-board tariffs on imports.

President-elect Donald Trump has said the U.S. will slap a new 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, along with an additional 10% on Chinese imports. While campaigning, Trump also mentioned a 10% tariff on all imports and an additional 60% tariff on imports from China.

Read more
Range Rover’s electric SUV gets tested in extreme heat
range rover electric suv heat testing rr bev td 28112024 01 1

A big part of the reason it’s taken so long for Range Rover to develop its first-ever electric SUV is that the automaker wants the next-gen EV to remain, first and foremost, true to its roots.

“The electric Range Rover has to be a Range Rover first,” Lennard Hoonik, COO at parent company JLR, told Motortrend last summer.

Read more