Organ donation

You may be sitting on – so to speak – a very valuable asset that scientists would love to get their hands on: your poop. As well as blood, plasma and organs, you can now donate fecal samples to stool banks for research and use in transplants.

A tiny implant that beams images straight to the retina, bypassing a damaged cornea altogether, could give sight back to millions living with corneal blindness – no donor tissue required. Human trials may be underway in as little as two years.

A new two-step process that safely rewarms frozen tissues using nanoscale magnetic rods could preserve donor organs long-term. The procedure provides an alternative to current time-limited methods and paves the way for more life-saving transplantations.

For the first time, the fully mechanical heart made by BiVACOR, which uses the same technology as high-speed rail lines, has been implanted inside a human being. The feat marks a major step in keeping people alive as they wait for heart transplants.

A genetically edited pig kidney has been successfully transplanted into a living patient for the first time. Reports indicate the man is doing well a few weeks on, raising hopes for a wider pool of donated organs in future.

A 58-year-old man with terminal heart disease has become the second patient to receive a pig's heart, in a complicated, high-risk xenotransplant. The first recipient died last year from complications, two months after the landmark world-first surgery.

Scientists from Northwestern University have successfully created a device, tested on mice, that can detect warning signs of kidney rejection up to three weeks before current monitoring methods.

Scientists have performed the first successful transplant of an organ that had been cryogenically frozen and rewarmed. Rats that were given transplants of kidneys preserved through a new technique regained regular organ function within weeks.

The standard for storing lungs for transplant procedures has been to pack them in ice in coolers and rush them to the surgery site. But researchers have found that a warmer temperature can dramatically improve the time during which they stay viable.

A new experimental treatment could help treat end-stage liver disease – by growing tiny new livers elsewhere in the patient’s bodies. The technique, pioneered by cell therapy company LyGenesis, is due to begin human clinical trials within weeks.

Organ transplants can be life-saving, but matching blood types means many people are left on waiting lists. Cambridge scientists have now demonstrated a technique that could one day make donated organs universal, by converting them to blood type O.

Researchers have announced success from a pair of experimental pig-to-human heart transplant procedures completed on recently deceased human subjects who were kept on mechanical ventilation for three days while the organs were monitored in their bodies.