What’s the News: While mice are a major tool for biomedical research, they’re not always useful for testing the toxicity of pharmaceutical drugs because their livers don’t react to drugs the same way that human livers do. But in a new study, published in the journal PNAS, scientists at MIT have gotten around this issue by implanting mice with miniature, humanized livers. Researchers may be able to use the artificial organs to help create drugs for diseases like hepatitis C, which mice don’t normally contract, and improve the development of other drugs. “In the near term, we envision using these mice alongside existing toxicology models to help make the drug development pipeline safer and more efficient,” said MIT biomedical engineer Alice Chen (via LiveScience).
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Researchers have built miniature human livers in the lab, which could lead to better drug discovery and could even point the way toward implantable artificial organs. The mini-livers seem to act like human livers in the lab, but it remains to be seen how well they’ll survive and perform when transplanted into animals or, maybe one day, humans.
“We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we’re at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients,” said Shay Soker, Ph.D., professor of regenerative medicine and project director. “Not only must we learn how to grow billions of liver cells at one time in order to engineer livers large enough for patients, but we must determine whether these organs are safe to use in patients.” [Press release].
The researchers at Wake Forest’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine created livers that weigh about 0.2 ounces each. That’s not nearly large enough to keep a human alive (it would need to be about 80 times larger for that), but getting the organ made was a feat in itself. The livers were made using the extracellular scaffolding from an animal liver, after all of the animal’s cells had been gently removed from it.
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An Israeli biotech company says it has developed a way of freezing and then thawing a pig liver that doesn’t destroy the organ, and says that the thawed out liver appeared to function normally when transplanted into a new pig. The company, Core Dynamics, says the work could lead to advances in human organ transplants, and could eventually allow for “banks” of frozen organs. Organ donation schemes have to work fast to match organs with patients who need them, as, even if kept chilled, they can become unusable within 24 hours. Researchers have been looking for ways to preserve them by freezing, to cope with delays between donation and transplant operation [BBC News].
Lead researcher Amir Arav says the key to limiting cell damage during freezing is to cool the liver very slowly, as this prevents the formation of jagged ice crystals. Some frog species employ a similar technique when they allow parts of their bodies to freeze during hibernation. “We didn’t invent this process, nature did,” says Arav [New Scientist].
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