TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE TAKAHASHI TSUJI'S LABORATORY

Development of ex vivo organ culture system

There is the drastic shortage of organs for transplantation. Static cold storage is generally used to preserve an isolated organ. However, application of organ transplantation therapy is limited by the maximum storage life of isolated organs ex vivo. Currently, no ex vivo culture system is available to maintain function of isolated organs for long time. In order to improve availability of the organ transplantation therapy, we are developing ex vivo organ culture system that is capable of expanding time limitation of isolated organ. We also consider that the organ culture system will be useful not only the storage of isolated organs, but also the organ germ method to foster enough size for transplantable bioengineered organs in vitro. These technologies would contribute the solution of insufficiency of transplantable organs and development of novel bioengineered organ transplantation system.