Perfusion Machine can Keep Human Livers Alive Outside the Body for 1 Week

Newly discovered perfusion machine can repair injured human livers and keeps them alive outside the body for one week. This groundbreaking discovery could increase the number of available organs for transplantation, thereby saving many lives of patients with liver cancer or other severe liver diseases.

Highlights:

Human livers can now be kept alive outside the body
New perfusion machine can repair and preserve injured livers outside the body for one week
This striking discovery could increase the number of available organs for transplantation and save many lives of patients with liver cancer or other deadly liver diseases

Human livers could be stored safely outside the body for an entire week, reports a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.//

A team of researchers from the University Hospital Zurich, ETH Zurich, Wyss Zurich and the University of Zurich have developed a machine that repairs injured human livers and keeps them alive outside the body for one week. This breakthrough may increase the number of available organs for transplantation saving many lives of patients with severe liver diseases or cancer.

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‘Newly discovered perfusion machine can repair injured human livers and keeps them alive outside the body for one week. This groundbreaking discovery could increase the number of available organs for transplantation, thereby saving many lives of patients with severe liver diseases or cancer.’
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How Long can a Liver Survive Outside the Body?

Until now, livers could be stored safely outside the body for only a few hours. With the novel perfusion technology, livers - and even injured livers - can now be kept alive outside of the body for an entire week. This is a major breakthrough in transplantation medicine, which may increase the number of available organs for transplantation and save many lives of patients suffering from severe liver disease or a variety of cancers.

Injured cadaveric livers, initially not suitable for use in transplantation, may regain full function while perfused in the new machine for several days. The basis for this technology is a complex perfusion system, mimicking most core body functions close to physiology. The corresponding study was published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.

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Offering What Other Machines Cannot

"The success of this unique perfusion system - developed over a four-year period 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).

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When the project started in 2015, livers could only be kept on the machine for 12 hours. The seven-day successful perfusion of poor-quality livers now allows for a wide range of strategies, e.g. repair of preexisting injury, cleaning of fat deposits in the liver or even regeneration of partial livers.

Liver4Life: A Project from Wyss Zurich

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Liver disease that ends in liver failure (end stage liver disease), disrupting several important metabolic functions needs liver transplant for patient survival.

The Liver4Life project 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 now published in Nature Biotechnology.

Technology with Great Potential

The inaugural study shows that six of ten perfused poor-quality human livers, declined for transplantation by all centers in Europe, recovered to full function within one week of perfusion on the machine.

The next step will be to use these organs for transplantation. The proposed technology opens a large avenue for many applications offering a new life for many patients with end stage liver disease or cancer.

Reference:

An integrated perfusion machine preserves injured human livers for 1 week - (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0374-x)

Source-Eurekalert