Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 11, 2026
Liver Cold Storage and Transplantation in the Cold-Adaptive Daurian Ground Squirrels
Published on: July 3, 2025
Multidrug donor preconditioning prevents cold liver preservation and reperfusion injury
Mohammed Reza Moussavian1, Claudia Scheuer, Michael Schmidt
1Department of General, Vascular and Pediatric Surgery, University of Saarland, 66421 Homburg/Saar, Germany. mamal@gmx.de
Purpose:
Primary graft dysfunction still represents a major challenge in liver transplantation. We herein studied in an isolated rat liver perfusion model whether a multidrug donor preconditioning (MDDP) can not only reduce but also completely prevent cold ischemia-reperfusion injury.
Methods:
MDDP included curcumin, simvastatin, N-acetylcysteine, erythropoietin, pentoxyphylline, melatonin, glycine, and methylprednisolone. Postischemic reperfusion was performed after 24 h cold storage in histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate solution with 37°C Krebs Henseleit bicarbonate buffer.
Results:
Cold hepatic ischemia-reperfusion resulted in a massive K(+) release, protein loss, and aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, and lactate dehydrogenase elevation. This was associated with increased malondialdehyde formation, enhanced tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-6 production, pronounced leukocytic tissue infiltration, and apoptotic cell death.
Conclusions:
MDDP abolished the inflammation response and was capable of completely preventing the manifestation of parenchymal injury. Thus, MDDP potentiates the protective effects reported after single-drug donor preconditioning and may therefore be an interesting approach to improve the outcome in clinical liver transplantation.
