Machine perfusion (MP) is an artificial perfusion technique often used for organ preservation to help facilitate organ transplantation. MP works by continuously pumping a specialized solution through donor organs, mimicking the body's natural blood flow while actively controlling temperature, oxygen levels, chemical composition, and mechanical stress within the organ. By maintaining organ viability outside the body for extended periods, machine perfusion addresses critical challenges in organ transplantation, such as limited preservation times, and introduces a time window for graft assessment and repair.
Machine perfusion has various forms and can be categorised according to the temperature of the perfusate: cold (4 °C) and warm (37 °C). Machine perfusion has been applied to renal transplantation, liver transplantation and lung transplantation. It is an alternative to static cold storage (SCS).
Research and development A record-long of human transplant organ preservation with machine perfusion of a liver for 3 days rather than usually <12 hours was reported in 2022. It could possibly be extended to 10 days and prevent substantial cell damage by low temperature preservation methods. Alternative approaches include novel cryoprotectant solvents.
There is a novel organ perfusion system under development that can restore, i.e. on the cellular level, multiple vital (pig) organs one hour after death (during which the body had a prolonged warm ischaemia), and a similar method/system for reviving (pig) brains hours after death. The system for cellular recovery could be used to preserve donor organs or for revival-treatments in medical emergencies.
History of kidney preservation techniques
An essential preliminary to the development of kidney storage and transplantation was the work of Alexis Carrel in developing methods for Vascular anastomosis. Carrel went on to describe the first kidney transplants, which were performed in dogs in 1902; Ullman independently described similar experiments in the same year. In these experiments kidneys were transplanted without there being any attempt at storage.
The crucial step in making in vitro storage of kidneys possible, was the demonstration by Fuhrman in 1943, of a reversible effect of hypothermia on the metabolic processes of isolated tissues. Prior to this, kidneys had been stored at normal body temperatures using blood or diluted blood perfusates, but no successful reimplantations had been made. Fuhrman showed that slices of rat kidney cortex and brain withstood cooling to 0.2 °C for one hour at which temperature their oxygen consumption was minimal. When the slices were rewarmed to 37 °C their oxygen consumption recovered to normal.
The beneficial effect of hypothermia on ischaemic intact kidneys was demonstrated by Owens in 1955 when he showed that, if dogs were cooled to 23-26 °C, and their thoracic aortas were occluded for 2 hours, their kidneys showed no apparent damage when the dogs were rewarmed. This protective effect of hypothermia on renal ischaemic damage was confirmed by Bogardus who showed a protective effect from surface cooling of dog kidneys whose renal pedicles were clamped in situ for 2 hours. Moyer demonstrated the applicability of these dog experiments to the human, by showing the same effect on dog and human kidney function from the same periods of hypothermic ischaemia.
It was not until 1958 that it was shown that intact dog kidneys would survive ischaemia even better if they were cooled to lower temperatures. Stueber showed that kidneys would survive in situ clamping of the renal pedicle for 6 hours if the kidneys were cooled to 0-5 °C by being placed in a cooling jacket, and Schloerb showed that a similar technique with cooling of heparinised dog kidneys to 2-4 °C gave protection for 8 hours but not 12 hours. Schloerb also attempted in vitro storage and auto-transplantation of cooled kidneys, and had one long term survivor after 4 hours kidney storage followed by reimplantation and immediate contralateral nephrectomy. He also had a near survivor, after 24-hour kidney storage and delayed contralateral nephrectomy, in a dog that developed a late arterial thrombosis in the kidney.
These methods of surface cooling were improved by the introduction of techniques in which the kidney's vascular system was flushed out with cold fluid prior to storage. This had the effect of increasing the speed of cooling of the kidney and removed red cells from the vascular system. Kiser used this technique to achieve successful 7 hours in vitro storage of a dog kidney, when the kidney had been flushed at 5 °C with a mixture of dextran and diluted blood prior to storage. In 1960 Lapchinsky confirmed that similar storage periods were possible, when he reported eight dogs surviving after their kidneys had been stored at 2-4 °C for 28 hours, followed by auto-transplantation and delayed contralateral nephrectomy. Although Lapchinsky gave no details in his paper, Humphries reported that these experiments had involved cooling the kidneys for 1 hour with cold blood, and then storage at 2-4 °C, followed by rewarming of the kidneys over 1 hour with warm blood at the time of reimplantation. The contralateral nephrectomies were delayed for two months.
Humphries developed this storage technique by continuously perfusing the kidney throughout the period of storage. He used diluted plasma or serum as the perfusate and pointed out the necessity for low perfusate pressures to prevent kidney swelling, but admitted that the optimum values for such variables as perfusate temperature, Po2, and flow, remained unknown. His best results, at this time, were 2 dogs that survived after having their kidneys stored for 24 hours at 4-10 °C followed by auto-transplantation and delayed contralateral nephrectomy a few weeks later.
Calne challenged the necessity of using continuous perfusion methods by demonstrating that successful 12-hour preservation could be achieved using much simpler techniques. Calne had one kidney supporting life even when the contralateral nephrectomy was performed at the same time as the reimplantation operation. Calne merely heparinised dog kidneys and then stored them in iced solution at 4 °C. Although 17-hour preservation was shown to be possible in one experiment when nephrectomy was delayed, no success was achieved with 24-hour storage.
The next advance was made by Humphries in 1964, when he modified the perfusate used in his original continuous perfusion system, and had a dog kidney able to support life after 24-hour storage, even when an immediate contralateral nephrectomy was performed at the same time as the reimplantation. In these experiments autogenous blood, diluted 50% with Tis-U-Sol solution at 10 °C, was used as the perfusate. The perfusate pressure was 40 mm Hg and perfusate pH 7.11-7.35 (at 37 °C). A membrane lung was used for oxygenation to avoid damaging the blood.
In attempting to improve on these results Manax investigated the effect of hyperbaric oxygen, and found that successful 48-hour storage of dog kidneys was possible at 2 °C without using continuous perfusion, when the kidneys were flushed with a dextran/Tis-U-Sol solution before storage at 7.9 atmospheres pressure, and if the contralateral nephrectomy was delayed till 2 to 4 weeks after reimplantation. Manax postulated that hyperbaric oxygen might work either by inhibiting metabolism or by aiding diffusion of oxygen into the kidney cells, but he reported no control experiments to determine whether other aspects of his model were more important than hyperbaria.
A marked improvement in storage times was achieved by Belzer in 1967 when he reported successful 72-hour kidney storage after returning to the use of continuous perfusion using a canine plasma based perfusate at 8-12 °C. Belzer found that the crucial factor in permitting uncomplicated 72-hour perfusion was cryoprecipitation of the plasma used in the perfusate to reduce the amount of unstable lipo-proteins which otherwise precipitated out of solution and progressively obstructed the kidney's vascular system. A membrane oxygenator was also used in the system in a further attempt to prevent denaturation of the lipo-proteins because only 35% of the lipo-proteins were removed by cryo-precipitation. The perfusate comprised 1 litre of canine plasma, 4 mEq of magnesium sulphate, 250 mL of dextrose, 80 units of insulin, 200,000 units of penicillin and 100 mg of hydrocortisone. Besides being cryo-precipitated, the perfusate was pre-filtered through a 0.22 micron filter immediately prior to use. Belzer used a perfusate pH of 7.4-7.5, a Po2 of 150–190 mm Hg, and a perfusate pressure of 50–80 mm Hg systolic, in a machine that produced a pulsatile perfusate flow. Using this system Belzer had 6 dogs surviving after their kidneys had been stored for 72 hours and then reimplanted, with immediate contralateral nephrectomies being performed at the reimplantation operations.
Belzer's use of hydrocortisone as an adjuvant to preservation had been suggested by Lotke's work with dog kidney slices, in which hydrocortisone improved the ability of slices to excrete PAH and oxygen after 30 hour storage at 2-4 °C; Lotke suggested that hydrocortisone might be acting as a lysosomal membrane stabiliser in these experiments. The other components of Belzer's model were arrived at empirically. The insulin and magnesium were used partially in an attempt to induce artificial hibernation, as Suomalainen found this regime to be effective in inducing hibernation in natural hibernators. The magnesium was also provided as a metabolic inhibitor following Kamiyama's demonstration that it was an effective agent in dog heart preservation. A further justification for the magnesium was that it was needed to replace calcium which had been bound by citrate in the plasma.
Belzer demonstrated the applicability of his dog experiments to human kidney storage when he reported his experiences in human renal transplantation using the same storage techniques as he had used for dog kidneys. He was able to store kidneys for up to 50 hours with only 8% of patients requiring post operative dialysis when the donor had been well prepared.
In 1968 Humphries reported 1 survivor out of 14 dogs following 5 day storage of their kidneys in a perfusion machine at 10 °C, using a diluted plasma medium containing extra fatty acids. However, delayed contralateral nephrectomy 4 weeks after reimplantation was necessary in these experiments to achieve success, and this indicated that the kidneys were severely injured during storage.