Editing Organ transplantation (section)

==Research==

An early-stage medical laboratory and research company, called [[Organovo]], designs and develops functional, three dimensional human tissue for medical research and therapeutic applications. The company utilizes its [[NovoGen]] MMX Bioprinter for 3D bioprinting. Organovo anticipates that the bioprinting of human tissues will accelerate the preclinical drug testing and discovery process, enabling treatments to be created more quickly and at lower cost. Additionally, Organovo has long-term expectations that this technology could be suitable for surgical therapy and transplantation.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.organovo.com/3d-human-tissues |title=3D Human Tissues for Medical Research & Therapeutics |access-date=2015-07-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140423120540/http://www.organovo.com/3d-human-tissues |archive-date=23 April 2014}}</ref>

A further area of active research is concerned with improving and assessing organs during their preservation. Various techniques have emerged which show great promise, most of which involve perfusing the organ under either hypothermic (4–10&nbsp;°C) or normothermic (37&nbsp;°C) conditions. All of these add additional cost and logistical complexity to the organ retrieval, preservation and transplant process, but early results suggest it may well be worth it. Hypothermic perfusion is in clinical use for transplantation of kidneys and liver whilst normothermic perfusion has been used effectively in the heart, lung, liver<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1038/s41586-018-0047-9 |pmid = 29670285|title=A randomized trial of normothermic preservation in liver transplantation |journal=Nature |volume=557 |issue=7703 |pages=50–56 |year=2018 |last1=Nasralla |first1=David |last2=Coussios |first2=Constantin C. |last3=Mergental |first3=Hynek |last4=Akhtar |first4=M. Zeeshan |last5=Butler |first5=Andrew J. |last6=Ceresa |first6=Carlo D. L. |last7=Chiocchia |first7=Virginia |last8=Dutton |first8=Susan J. |last9=García-Valdecasas |first9=Juan Carlos |last10=Heaton |first10=Nigel |last11=Imber |first11=Charles |last12=Jassem |first12=Wayel |last13=Jochmans |first13=Ina |last14=Karani |first14=John |last15=Knight |first15=Simon R. |last16=Kocabayoglu |first16=Peri |last17=Malagò |first17=Massimo |last18=Mirza |first18=Darius |last19=Morris |first19=Peter J. |last20=Pallan |first20=Arvind |last21=Paul |first21=Andreas |last22=Pavel |first22=Mihai |last23=Perera |first23=M. Thamara P. R. |last24=Pirenne |first24=Jacques |last25=Ravikumar |first25=Reena |last26=Russell |first26=Leslie |last27=Upponi |first27=Sara |last28=Watson |first28=Chris J. E. |last29=Weissenbacher |first29=Annemarie |last30=Ploeg |first30=Rutger J. |display-authors=29 |bibcode = 2018Natur.557...50N|s2cid = 4990879|url = https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/276902}}</ref> and, less so, in the kidney.

Another area of research being explored is the use of genetically engineered animals for transplants. Similar to human organ donors, scientists have developed a genetically engineered pig with the aim of reducing rejection to pig organs by human patients. This is currently at the basic research stage, but shows great promise in alleviating the long waiting lists for organ transplants and the number of people in need of transplants outweighs the amount of organs donated. Trials are being done to prevent the pig organ transplant to enter a clinical trial phase until the potential disease transfer from pigs to humans can be safely and satisfactorily managed (Isola & Gordon, 1991).