The shortage of organs for transplantation is serious, and in order to solve this, it is desired to put into practical use a technique for resuscitating a donor organ whose function has deteriorated as a transplantable organ in vitro.In Western countries, attempts have begun to resuscitate the functions of donor organs that have been ischemic for a long time due to cardiac arrest or brain death by "mechanical perfusion" (using a machine to pour a liquid such as a drug solution into the organs). It is said that there is.

　SCREEN Holdings has been engaged in research and development of organ perfusion systems that enable long-term preservation and functional resuscitation of organs through joint research with RIKEN and others.And this time, with a view to practical application of this system, in parallel with the development of the device, how long will it take to mechanically perfuse an organ that has deteriorated due to ischemia during transplantation together with Keio University? I verified that.

　As a result, it was confirmed that functional resuscitation can be achieved within 3 hours by in vitro perfusion of the deteriorated pig liver.In addition, from the metabolome comparative analysis of metabolic capacity during resuscitation, it was found that when perfused with blood itself, the liver metabolic capacity is functionally resuscitated to the same extent as when transplanted into a living body.

　This result, which shows that in vitro resuscitation is possible in a short time even for organs that have stopped circulating for a long time, is expected to give momentum to the practical application of the organ perfusion system that people involved in transplantation have been waiting for.

Paper information:[Transplantation Direct] Rapid Metabolic Recovery of Donor Circulatory Death Liver Graft Using Whole Blood Perfusion: A Pig Study