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REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Translational Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1566080
This article is part of the Research Topic 25 Years of 21st Century Medicine View all articles
Organ Preservation: Current Limitations and Optimization Approaches
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Institute of Heart Lung and Blood Vessel Diseases., Beijing, China
- 2 Translational Medicine Center, Beijing Chest Hospital, Capital Medical University., Beijing, China
Despite the annual rise in patients with end-stage diseases necessitating organ transplantation, the scarcity of high-quality grafts constrains the further development of transplantation. The primary causes of the graft shortage are the scarcity of standard criteria donors, unsatisfactory organ preservation strategies, and mismatching issues. Organ preservation strategies are intimately related to pre-transplant graft viability and the incidence of adverse clinical outcomes. Static cold storage (SCS) is the current standard practice of organ preservation, characterized by its cost-effectiveness, ease of transport, and excellent clinical outcomes. However, cold-induced injury during static cold preservation, toxicity of organ preservation solution components, and post-transplantation reperfusion injury could further exacerbate graft damage. Long-term ex vivo dynamic machine perfusion (MP) preserves grafts in a near-physiological condition, evaluates graft viability, and cures damage to grafts, hence enhancing the usage and survival rates of marginal organs. With the increased use of extended criteria donors (ECD) and advancements in machine perfusion technology, static cold storage is being gradually replaced by machine perfusion. This review encapsulates the latest developments in cryopreservation, subzero non-freezing storage, static cold storage, and machine perfusion. The emphasis is on the injury mechanisms linked to static cold storage and optimization strategies, which may serve as references for the optimization of machine perfusion techniques.
Keywords: Organ Preservation, Transplantation, static cold storage, Machine perfusion, Graft quality, Organ repair
Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 28 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ran, Zhang, Zhong, Lin, Zhang, Li and Bin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
You Bin, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Institute of Heart Lung and Blood Vessel Diseases., Beijing, China
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