title: Diluted blood reperfusion as a model for transplantation of ischemic rat livers: alanine aminotransferase is a direct indicator of viability.
abstract: Donors after cardiac death present a significant pool of untapped organs for transplantation, and use of machine perfusion strategies has been an active focus area in experimental transplantation. However, despite 2 decades of research, a gold standard has yet to emerge for machine perfusion systems and protocols. Whole blood reperfusion has been used as a surrogate for organ transplantation, especially as a model for the short-term response posttransplantation, and for optimization of perfusion systems. Although it is known that there is a strong correlation between liver function in whole-blood reperfusion and survival, the exact nature of these correlations, and to what extent they can be considered as an indicator of viability for transplantation/recipient survival, remain unclear. In this work, we demonstrate that diluted whole-blood reperfusion can be used as a direct model for transplantation of ischemic rat liver grafts. Specifically, we show that recipient survival can be predicted based simply on the value of alanine aminotransferase during perfusion, providing quantitative criteria of viability for use in this animal model. These results indicate that in the rat model graft survival is highly correlated with hepatocellular damage.
authors.affiliation: Center for Engineering in Medicine and the Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Uygun
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tolboom
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Izamis
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Uygun
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yagi
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Soto-Gutierrez
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hertl
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Berthiaume
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Yarmush
mesh_terms: D000410:Alanine Transaminase / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D001219:Aspartate Aminotransferases / Q000378:metabolism; D001646:Bile / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D006085:Graft Survival / Q000502:physiology; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000379:methods* / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D010101:Oxygen Consumption; D051381:Rats; D015424:Reperfusion / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D001219:Aspartate Aminotransferases; D000410:Alanine Transaminase