Through the efforts of scientists, the preservation and storage time of rat liver used for organ transplantation can be significantly extended to 4 days. The research published in "Nature-Medical" found that it may directly solve the current shortage of human organs donated.
Due to the limitations of the current traditional preservation methods of organs, human organs can only be stored for 6 to 12 hours. Extending the preservation time of human organs can have a significant impact on clinical liver transplantation cases. Doctors will have more time to actively prepare for organ transplant recipients, and at the same time, from the geographical perspective, the source of donated organs can be wider.
Using a method based on sub-zero non-icing (or super-cold) tissue preservation, combined with in vitro machine perfusion, Korkut Uygun et al. successfully proved that rats can be transplanted with a liver that is preserved for 3 days within one month , The survival rate can reach 100%.
The survival rate of rats implanted with a liver preserved for 4 days can reach 60% after the next month. On the contrary, the livers of rats preserved for 3 days using traditional methods are all necrotic and unusable.