Supercooling tripled the shelf life of donor livers

Chemicals that prevent the human tissue from freezing may help ease organ shortages

human liver

Treating human livers with protective chemicals (red liquid) before storing them at subzero temperatures kept the organs viable for over a full day outside the body — about three times as long as a liver’s normal preservation time on ice.

Jeffrey Andree, Reinier de Vries and Korkut Uygun

A new technique to keep donor organs colder than ice cold could greatly extend the length of time that those organs are viable for transplant.