Preserving organs for donors

Hemant Thatte, a surgeon at the V.A. Hospital in Boston, has developed a liquid preservative that may be able to keep human organs viable for transplantation up to ten days after they are removed from the donor.  Currently, transplantable organs have about a twelve hour shelf life.  This new solution converts the ammonia from a toxic byproduct of metabolism to a metabolite that supports the nitric-oxide pathway in opening vascularization of the organ. In that way, the rate of cell death slows significantly.   MORE

Image Credit:  Harvard and Technology Review