Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of the body

Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by blensor on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @05:15AM (#22043422)

I am not a medical expert or even remotely tied to that field but don't livers regrow to some extent? If this process could be extended even further wouldn't that mean we could regrow complete livers from partial donations pretty soon, making the whole "waiting for a donor" gamble obsolete?

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by Zemke on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @05:18AM (#22043438)

Yes.

> The seven-day successful perfusion of poor-quality livers now allows for a wide range of strategies, e.g. repair of preexisting injury, cleaning of fat deposits in the liver or even regeneration of partial livers.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by toomuchtodo on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:15AM (#22046163)

I assume that this might even assist in the growth of livers (extracellular matrix, liver and circulatory tissues) from stem cells.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by war1025 on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:43AM (#22046515)

I think I read recently (don't know where, not looking it up) that the liver can regrow in the sense that it is made of lobes, and you can lose a lobe and the others will expand to restore full function.

But the lobes themselves don't regenerate, so it's not a thing that can be done more than a time or two.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by Karlozkiller on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @06:07AM (#22043690)

No expert either, but afaik you can divide livers into thirds and they will regrow. So when you transplant a liver you take two thirds from the donor, I assume to give the recipient more liver to work with, but I don't know why. (spelling edit)

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by social_quotient on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @06:43AM (#22043882)

Yeah seems 25% is needed for regrow. That number seems interesting, almost like the body’s parity raid bit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_regeneration

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by samstave on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @10:52AM (#22045914)

Funny to use “parity raid bit” on an SPOF organ such as is the liver.

Though, i have always been curious as to why the body only has one liver while having pairs of many other organs...

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by ASalazarMX on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:47AM (#22046559)

Adding to your question, why did the liver evolve to regenerate while other organs evolved to have spares? What makes it special?

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by akiselev on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @01:25PM (#22047699)

The liver is responsible for clearing out the majority of toxins and since many of them can cause cell death, the organ needs to be able to regenerate itself.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by riversflow on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @08:12PM (#22050897)

I’m guessing it has something to do with the size of a liver. Organs that have spares are relatively small.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by abakker on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:24PM (#22051754)

Lungs? They’re pretty big. My grandfather lived 60 years with only 1, and it stretched to fill most of his chest cavity.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by trhway on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @03:07PM (#22048716)

a plastic surgery to build in Klingon like capabilities - take the piece of the liver like for transplant and transplant it into the other side of the body, and after some time for regrow the person would just have 2 full livers.

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Re:Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of ... by nkrisc on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @07:25AM (#22044125)

I'm not an expert but that won't stop me from guessing why!

Perhaps it would be far easier for the donor to regrow the majority of their own liver in their own body than it would be for the recipient, given the immune response and other factors that I would imagine complicate a transplant.

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