6 ms·
New Research Can Preserve Organs for 10 Days
- jacquesm 16y agoThat video is disturbing.
- yanw 16y agoIt's as impressive as it is creepy.
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoBest science story I have seen in months. I bet this is keying off the exsanguination and Hydrogen Sulfide work we've read about before in places like Scientific American -- where cell damage happens in the transition to a low oxygen environment, not necessarily being in one. Aside from the far-out dream of cryogenics, of which I'm a big fan, this has huge implications for surgery. If you can take a person into hibernation for a day, working at your leisure, you can do all sorts of things that we couldn't do before. Huge, huge story.
- yan 16y agoDo you follow a specific set of blogs/publications to keep up with biohacking news or do you just consume what you come across?
- kyro 16y agoYou could check out HackerMed.com if you want bio/med-hacking news. Not to pimp the site here, but your question really asked for it. :P
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoI'm specifically interesting in hibernation, cryogenics, suspended animation, etc. I just scan several science sites and look for those terms. (When my browser comes up, I have 43 tabs for my home page)
- fendrak 16y agoThe part of the article I want to know more about is the post mortem organ harvest. How long after death did they wait before harvesting the heart?
- geuis 16y agoThey didn't actually store and revive a heart after ten days. They extrapolated the estimate based on tissue samples taken over the coure of a few hours. To better understand if and how Somah preserved a heart, Thatte and his group harvested two female pig hearts and placed them in two different containers. One was filled with Somah, the other with Celsior from Genzyme – the standard chemical bath which preserves organs in hospitals today. As described in the journal Circulation, the team took tissue samples every four hours from each heart. They found that the Somah heart had a much lower rate of cell decay, including important cardiomyocyte and endothelial cells which are necessary for the heart to work in a new host. Based on this research they concluded that hearts preserved in Somah should be viable for up to 10 days. Celsior can store the organ for 4 hours. That’s an epic difference.
- jws 16y agoPlenty of time for an eBay auction! Seriously though, this probably complicates organ allocation tremendously. Right now they only have to consider the relatively small pool of recipients that are compatible and close enough to hit the window. There may be scaling issues.
- a-priori 16y agoHaving "scaling issues" would be a nice problem to have. That would be a hell of a lot better than the perpetual organ shortages we have now.
- steve19 16y agoThis is sure to create a global blackmarket for organs. Chinese execution harvesters will now be able to export their wares globally.