Injured Human liver can be Treated in Machine

The multidisciplinary Zurich research team Liver4Life has succeeded in doing something during a treatment attempt that had never been achieved in the history of medicine until now.

?In January 2020, the multidisciplinary Zurich research team -- involving the collaboration of University Hospital Zurich (USZ), ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich (UZH) -- demonstrated for the first time that perfusion technology makes it possible to store a liver outside the body for several days. Like the diaphragm in the human body, the machine also moves the liver to the rhythm of human breathing.

The machine mimics the human body as accurately as possible, in order to provide ideal conditions for the human livers. A pump serves as a replacement heart, an oxygenator replaces the lungs and a dialysis unit performs the functions of the kidneys.

As part of an approved individual treatment attempt, the doctors gave a cancer patient on the transplant waiting list the choice of using the treated human liver. Following his consent, the organ was transplanted in May 2021.

The team prepared the liver in the machine with various drugs. In this way, it was possible to transform the liver into a good human organ, even though it was originally not approved for transplantation due to its poor quality. The multi-day perfusion, i.e. the mechanical circulation of the organ, enables antibiotic or hormonal therapies or the optimization of liver metabolism.

The Liver4Life research team owes its perfusion machine, which was developed in house, to the fact that it became possible to implant a human organ into a patient after a storage period of three days outside a body. The patient was able to leave hospital a few days after the transplantation and is now doing well.