BioMedInnovations Research Published in Frontiers in Medicine

BioMedInnovations reports the publication of a new article in the prestigious journal Frontiers in Medicine – “Two Compartment Evaluation of Liver Grafts During Acellular Room Temperature Machine Perfusion (acRTMP) in a Rat Liver Transplant Model” – from Nader Abraham and Andrew S. Barbas from the Duke Ex-Vivo Organ Lab (DEVOL) at Duke University, which uses DEVOL Solution™ – an acellular perfusate that mimics human plasma oncotic pressure, osmotic pressure, and acid-base balance and provides critical electrolytes like sodium, calcium, and potassium.

In their recent study, Abraham and Colleagues looked to explore whether the biliary compartment was more sensitive than perfusate in detecting injury during subnormothermic machine perfusion of liver grafts, which remains less clinically developed than normothermic and hypothermic approaches.

The authors compared transplants of donation after circulatory death livers and control livers after one hour of acellular room temperature machine perfusion using DEVOL Solution™ or static cold storage in a rat model using a wide range of point-of-care liver function tests in biliary and perfusate samples. Their findings supported their hypothesis – the authors discovered a significant concentration of graft injury markers in the biliary compartment but not the perfusate. Additionally, the team discovered that acellular room temperature machine perfusion using DEVOL Solution™ supported the ongoing function of donation after circulatory death livers and increased post-transplant survival in rats compared to livers kept in static cold storage.

Overall, these exciting findings suggest the biliary compartment as a more sensitive indicator of graft injury than the perfusate during acellular room temperature machine perfusion; meanwhile, this study also shows that acellular room temperature machine perfusion using DEVOL Solution™ supports superior graft preservation when compared to static cold storage.