Normothermic preservation of liver – what does the future hold?

Abstract

Recent years have demonstrated a surging interest in normothermic ex situ liver perfusion, with iterative experimental and clinical studies establishing this technology as providing obvious advantages over static cold storage. In particular, the safe prolongation of liver graft preservation even up to 1 week opens up possibilities of ‘on circuit’ interventions, which may radically change the logistics and scope of liver transplant practice. Such approaches are rife with potential, and have yet to be fully explored. Possibilities may include, but are not limited to mitochondrial enhancing strategies, steatotic graft defatting, on circuit addition of anti-aging compounds, altering graft immunogenic potential and gene silencing with siRNA, stem cell and nanoparticle therapies as well as ischemia free liver preservation. Ex situ machine perfusion technology as a platform for advanced graft modification strategies opens up the possibility of very specific, personalized transplant medicine, as well as the possibility of a future where organ grafts are re-used and repaired, providing utility to numerous successive surgical recipients, indefinitely.