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The cutting-edge cellular therapies aiming to ease America's organ shortage
Only a third of the people waiting for a liver from America's organ transplant network will actually receive a replacement. These are the techniques being used to stretch every donation just a bit farther.
This machine keeps transplant livers alive for a week
With current technology, a human liver donated for transplant can only be kept alive for 24 hours, and often, if the liver is damaged or diseased, it cannot be considered for transplant. That could soon change. Liver4Life has developed a liver perfusion machine that can preserve injured human livers for one week and can even repair damage.
Researchers use ultrasound to activate cancer-killing drugs
Since your liver is surrounded by delicate blood vessels and bile ducts, cancers are tough to treat with toxic chemotherapy drugs and usually require surgery. However, researchers from the University of Illinois have pioneered a new "triple attack" treatment that kills cancer cells with a standard lymphoma chemo drug. "Nanobubbles" of it are injected into a cancer mass, then "popped" using ultrasound, releasing medicine directly into cancer cells during critical cell formation. "The probability of its undesired systemic release is minimal due to this highly selective activation mechanism, which helps to spare the healthy cells," says lead researcher Dipanjan Pan.
3D-printed livers go on sale to impatient scientists
So far, the biggest benefit of 3D-printing organs is that you don't need someone to donate their body to medical science before you can do an experiment. That's why Organovo's big news is so exciting for scientists, since the company has let it be known that its 3D-printed livers are now on sale. The bio-printed tissues can be used for drug testing programs, since causing unexpected liver damage is one of the biggest causes for pharmaceutical recalls. Unfortunately, with a rated lifespan of around 42 days, we won't be able to use these stamp-sized organs in transplants just yet, but who knows? Maybe in a few years time, the idea of asking a relative or close friend for a slice of their liver will be as outdated as sending them a fax.
3D printed 'nano-liver' could help poisoning and infection victims
When 3D printing and nanotechnology get together for a party the results are actually good for your liver, according to researchers at the UC San Diego. They've managed to create a device that uses nanoparticles to trap toxins that can damage cells in the body, helping victims of animal stings, bacterial infections and other toxic horrors. Though nanoparticles are already used to help people with liver damage, they need to be ingested like food and can ironically cause secondary liver poisoning. By 3D printing a "hydrogel matrix" to enclose them, a faux-liver can be created and installed outside the body like a classic dialysis machine. A test device managed to destroy all the pore-forming toxins during in-vitro studies, so let's hope the research continues -- for the sake of some of our future livers.
Fraunhofer iPad app guides liver surgery through augmented reality
Liver surgery is more than a little dangerous -- with so many blood vessels, one wrong cut can lead to disaster. Fraunhofer MEVIS has just tested a new generation of augmented reality iPad app that could minimize those risks. The tool puts a 3D vessel map on top of live video of a patient, telling the surgeon where it's safe to make incisions. Doctors who do need to cut vessels can predict the level of blood loss and remove affected vessels from the map. The trial was successful enough that Fraunhofer MEVIS sees the new technology applying to surgery elsewhere in the body. If all goes well, there should be fewer accidents during tricky operations of many kinds -- a big relief for those of us going under the knife. [Thanks, Urban]
Scientists grow human liver from stem cells, hope to relieve transplant woes (video)
Stem cell research has resulted in several important breakthroughs in medicine, such as rebuilding the larynx and regenerating spinal cord connectors. Now the liver, one of the most highly sought after organs on the donor transplant list, could get some serious stem cell assistance as well. A team of scientists led by Takanori Takebe of Yokohama City University has successfully created a miniature version of the human liver with the help of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which are derived from adult somatic cells. They developed the iPSC into generalized liver cells called hepatocytes, at which point the researchers mixed in endothelial cells and mesenchymal stem cells, left the petri dishes alone for a couple days, and voila -- an extremely tiny version of a human liver, said to be the first-ever functional human organ grown from stem cells, was born. The liver "buds," as they're known, measure five millimeters long and are the sort you would find in human embryos shortly after fertilization. When implanted in mice, the baby livers managed to perform all the functions of their adult equivalents. The researchers' next step would be to generate liver buds that are a touch closer to normal liver tissue -- like the addition of bile ducts -- and to see if they can mass produce them by the tens of thousands. Don't go wasting your liver just yet though, as it'll likely be years before the likes of you and me will be able to have a lab-grown liver in our bodies. In the meantime, check out the time-lapse video after the break to see a young liver bud take shape in a petri dish.
Steve and the Governator mark transplant bill signing
In a ceremony commemorating California's SB 1395, the world's most well-known liver transplant recipient and the world's only former killer future robot turned politician posed for photos. Jobs and Schwarzenegger were at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Stanford, CA to mark the signing of the transplant bill into law. Both men have been active sponsors of the measure, which establishes a live donor registry for kidney transplants and sets up a binary opt-in/opt-out system for organ donation via the DMV. While Californians were able to register as organ donors before when getting or renewing a driver's license, the new system requires that they explicitly choose to be a donor or not to be a donor. Jobs received a liver transplant in 2009; he chose to register as a transplant candidate in Memphis, TN rather than in California in order to improve his odds of getting a donor organ in time to salvage his health. In his remarks at the March announcement of the bill, Steve noted that 400 Californians died waiting for donor organs in 2009.
Methodist University Hospital confirms Steve's liver transplant
Late last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant in April. As of this morning, however, we still hadn't received confirmation from either Apple or any of the hospitals at which the procedure might have been performed. That's changed. Earlier today, Methodist University Hospital in Memphis released a statement confirming the surgery, with Steve's permission: "I am pleased to confirm today, with the patient's permission, that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in partnership with the University of Tennessee in Memphis ... Our one-year patient and graft survival rates are among the best in the nation and were a dominant reason in Mr. Jobs's choice of transplant centers." James D. Eason, M.D., Program Director at Methodist University Hospital's Transplant Institute, composed the statement and explained that Steve went through the typical transplant eligibility process; in order to receive a donor liver, he had to be the sickest person on the list when the matching organ became available. This statement stands in contrast to the theories considered in today's New York Times piece about Steve's surgery, which noted that past preferential treatment for celebrities and wealthy patients has largely been ended but there are still ways in which someone with Jobs's resources could try to game the system. The Memphis transplant center has one of the shortest waiting periods in the US for liver patients. Let us extend a "Well done" to the medical team and "Speedy recovery" to Steve.
WSJ: Jobs had liver transplant, on schedule to return to work in June
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago in Tennessee, but is still expected to return to work by the end of the month. Jobs, who went on a medical leave from Apple in January, has had continuing medical issues related to a bout with pancreatic cancer. The type of pancreatic cancer that Jobs has will often metastasize in other organs, particularly the liver. According to the WSJ article, it is expected that Jobs will work part-time upon his return to the company in order to speed his recovery. The 54 year-old Jobs missed the Apple shareholder meeting in February, and hasn't been flying in his corporate jet (one of the perks he receives along with his US$1 annual compensation) as much as he had in the past. The TUAW staff, along with many of our readers, is looking forward to the return of the Steve Jobs to the company he helped to create.
New tech keeps tabs on your liver via cellphone
In the scheme of things, blood alcohol-screening phones probably stand to save more lives than... uh, Glutamine Oxaloacetic Transaminase and Glutamine Pyruvic Transaminase (affectionately known as GOT and GPT) screening phones, but health tech is health tech, and we've no doubt there's someone out there who's going to benefit from this. A crack team at Korea's Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology has developed a sensor that monitors GOT and GPT -- key indicators of liver function -- and uploads key stats via phone, presumably to a hospital or other interested parties. So if you've had the exact same idea kicking around for a while, sorry to say you might as well drop it now; the patent apps are filed and the team plans to pursue commercialization in the near future.[Via textually.org]
