UK device keeps liver "alive" outside of human body

Technology developed at Oxford University has enabled surgeons to keep a donated human liver alive outside a human being, before successfully transplanting it into a patient.

Liver transplantation currently depends on preserving donor organs by putting them ‘on ice’ - cooling them to slow their metabolism. But this often leads to organs becoming damaged.

The OrganOx Metra device, developed by Oxford spin-out OrganOx and now undergoing trials at King’s College Hospital, raises the liver to body temperature, and circulates red blood cells through its capillaries, enabling a liver to function exactly as it does within the human body.

The system was used for the first time earlier this year on two patients, who are both are reportedly making excellent recoveries.

‘The device is the very first completely automated liver perfusion device of its kind,’ said Prof Constantin Coussios of Oxford University’s Department of Engineering Science, one of the machine’s inventors and technical director of OrganOx, the University spin-out created to develop the technology. ‘The organ is perfused with oxygenated red blood cells at normal body temperature, just as it would be inside the body, and can for example be observed making bile, which makes it an extraordinary feat of engineering.’