Liver disease contributes significantly to global mortality as a stunning 2 million deaths are related to end stage liver disease annually, accounting for 4% of deaths worldwide. Global prevalence is increasing rapidly, mostly due to the aging population and sedentary lifestyle. At present, liver disease holds a major unmet medical need due to lack of effective treatment options. Liver transplantation is often the only curative option in advanced liver disease. However, there is a limited number of (suitable) donor livers available. The field of hepatology urgently needs novel therapies and more suitable livers for transplantation and progress on both fields is restricted by lack of models.
Ex situ normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) is an technique allowing to preserve human donor livers outside the body in a near-physiological environment at body temperature. ARREST will provide groundbreaking new models using ex situ NMP of human liver grafts and demonstrate the applicability of these models to test novel therapies to improve liver function in patients AND to develop regenerative medicine approaches enabling delivery of novel therapeutics (e.g. (stem)cell therapy, gene therapy, drugs) to repair, regenerate and optimize injured donor livers for transplantation that would normally be rejected. The first will lower the need for donor livers and the latter will lead to expansion of the liver donor pool together decreasing the discrepancy between donor liver demand and supply.
The ARREST consortium is a new consortium that brings together experts from different backgrounds, each with specific expertise relevant to liver (patho)physiology and state-of-the-art transplantation technology. ARREST outcomes are expected to be of great impact for patients suffering from liver disease and their quality of life. Application of NMP in liver disease research will also have economic benefits as it will reduce the enormous costs associated with chronic liver disease.
