Organ donation

Unfortunately donated organs don’t last long in storage. But now scientists have demonstrated that an existing drug can reprogram donor hearts to last much longer outside the body, and reduce their risk of failure after transplantation.

A new experimental treatment could help treat end-stage liver disease – by growing tiny new livers elsewhere in the patient’s bodies. The technique, pioneered by cell therapy company LyGenesis, is due to begin human clinical trials within weeks.

Organ transplants can be life-saving, but matching blood types means many people are left on waiting lists. Cambridge scientists have now demonstrated a technique that could one day make donated organs universal, by converting them to blood type O.

Scientists have demonstrated a new system that can restore crucial molecular and cellular functions in pigs one hour after death. The experiments could help widen the organ transplantation pool and may even lead to new treatments for heart attacks.

Researchers have announced success from a pair of experimental pig-to-human heart transplant procedures completed on recently deceased human subjects who were kept on mechanical ventilation for three days while the organs were monitored in their bodies.

Getting an organ from donor to recipient is a race against time, with many going to waste. Now, researchers in Australia have identified new cryoprotectants that could preserve organs and tissues for much longer without damaging them.

Matching blood types from donor to recipient is a major problem in organ donation. Researchers have now developed an enzyme treatment to convert donated organs to the universal O blood type, allowing them to be safely transplanted into any patient.

A major challenge when it comes to preserving tissues and organs for transplantation is preventing the buildup of ice crystals that can cause critical damage, but an emerging technology may help sidestep the whole issue.

Organ transplants save lives, but rejection is a serious issue. That risk can be reduced by stripping donor cells out of the donor organ and replacing them with the recipient’s own, and now scientists have made that process safer with a protein bath.

Imagine needing a liver transplant and, instead of waiting for a donor, a new one could just be grown from your own skin cells. In a big step towards this, mini human livers grown from stem cells have been successfully transplanted into rats.

In organ transplants, rejection by the recipient's immune system is a risk. Now researchers at Yale have discovered a molecule that plays a role in triggering a slow-acting type of rejection, which could be blocked to give patients a better outlook.

In what is being touted as a major breakthrough, scientists have developed a machine that can not only keep livers alive outside the body for a week, but can also rejuvenate damaged livers unfit for transplantation.