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Updated: Jun 6, 2025
Ex Situ Normothermic Machine Perfusion of Donor Livers
Published on: May 26, 2015
Normothermic machine perfusion of explanted livers: Exploratory study of an alternative translational model
Rachel Todd1,2, L Leonie van Leeuwen1, Matthew Holzner1
1Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, New York, USA.
Background:
Normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) is a technique for donor liver preservation and assessment in transplantation. NMP has gained momentum recently by enabling safer use of higher risk organs via organ viability assessment. It also offers a platform for investigating ex vivo organ biology.
Methods:
In this exploratory study, we completed a complex vascular reconstruction of explanted, diseased livers from patients undergoing transplantation and then perfused them normothermically on a closed perfusion circuit. We compared these livers to non-diseased donor livers via perfusate samples collected during perfusion.
Results:
Five hepatectomized grafts and eight donor livers were perfused for 1 h or longer. Four hepatectomized livers cleared lactate, and all consumed glucose; all control livers cleared lactate, and seven utilized glucose. Significantly higher portal vein flows were achieved in the control group.
Conclusions:
Our findings illustrate the feasibility of using closed-circuit NMP as a platform to study hepatectomized organs, which could reshape the research landscape in mechanisms of disease and applied therapeutics for patients with end-stage liver disease.
