World premiere: Human liver treated in machine and successfully transplanted
Tuesday, 31.05.2022
The multidisciplinary research team of the Wyss Zurich project Liver4Life has succeeded in a treatment attempt that had never been achieved in the history of medicine until now: it treated an originally damaged human liver in a machine for three days outside a body and then implanted the recovered organ into a cancer patient. One year later, the patient is doing well.
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.
The Liver4Life research team owes this success to its perfusion machine, which was developed in house, making it possible to implant a human organ into a patient after a storage period of three days outside a body. 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 of the heart, an oxygenator replaces the lungs and a dialysis unit takes over the functions of the kidneys. In addition, numerous hormone and nutrient infusions perform the functions of the intestine and pancreas. Like the diaphragm in the human body, the machine also moves the liver to the rhythm of human breathing.
For more details see Press Release
