Marginal liver grafts characterization: (1) Imaging and in situ spectral analysis of Nile Red-induced lipid fluorescence in MCD-induced liver steatosis

Abstract

Reclaiming fatty liver grafts for transplantation appears mandatory due to the shortage of donors. We demonstrated that obese Zucker rat livers were damaged by conventional cold-storage, but were better preserved by subnormothermic machine perfusion (Vairetti et al., 2009). Steatosis induced by a Methionine-Choline deficient (MCD) diet in the liver of Wistar rats is being now investigated respect to an isocaloric diet. We characterized the lipid content using the fluorescent probe Nile Red (NR): under excitation in the 400–500nm range, NR bound to triglycerides or cholesteryl esters emits a bright yellow fluorescence and a dimmer red emission when bound to phospholipids.