New tech for donor livers

Real-time biosensor measures pH, glucose and lactate in preserved donor livers

July 14, 2026
6:30 pm

More than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. For patients who need a liver transplant, determining whether a donor liver is healthy enough to transplant is a critical part of the process.

Yangzhi Zhu, Ph.D., principal investigator and assistant professor at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation, and collaborators at Mayo Clinic in Arizona developed a real-time biosensing platform designed to help answer that question during donor liver preservation.

The study, published in Nature Communications, reports a wireless dual-compartment biochemical monitoring platform that continuously measures key biomarkers in both perfusion fluid and bile during normothermic machine perfusion (NMP).

Real-time biosensor measures pH, glucose and lactate in preserved donor livers

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