New technique can preserve human livers for a week outside of the body
In a breakthrough, a team of researchers from the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland say they’ve invented a machine that can preserve the human livers from organ donors for a week.
This vital technology could increase the number of livers available for transplantation and offer new approaches to treating diseases such as liver cancer. The corresponding study was published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.
The researchers wrote that six out of ten poor-quality livers that would’ve been otherwise rejected at European hospitals made a full recovery after spending a week inside a specially designed “perfusion system. “The success of this unique perfusion system developed over four years by a group of surgeons, biologists and engineers paves the way for many new applications in transplantation and cancer medicine helping patients with no liver grafts available” explains Prof. Pierre-Alain Clavien, Chairman of the Department of Surgery and Transplantation at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ).
Livers are typically only stored for about nine to 12 hours on ice before transplant.
The project named Liver4Life was developed under the umbrella of Wyss Zurich institute, which brought together the highly specialized technical know-how and biomedical knowledge of experts from the University Hospital Zurich (USZ), ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich (UZH). “The biggest challenge in the initial phase of our project was to find a common language that would allow communication between the clinicians and engineers,” explains Prof. Philipp Rudolf von Rohr, Professor of Process Engineering at ETH Zurich and co-leader with Professor Clavien of the study.
The study has limitations, including that some aspects of liver function can only be assessed many months after transplantation.
However, Clavien said the system would be used for livers initially stored on ice but deemed too poor quality for immediate transplantation, and that in future it may also be used to boost the quality of marginal livers. Transplants in humans using the approach were in the offing, he said.
Source: Science daily, ANI, Guardian.