Porcine Cytokine Profiles Associated With Ischemia Reperfusion Injury in Liver Transplantation Using Donation After Cardiac Death.

Abstract

Introduction: Optimizing the use of marginal liver graft has been a problem due to organ shortage and high mortality rate during transplant waiting list. A close homology to humans including similar organ size, liver enzymes or immune system has given porcine models significantly increasing the use in scientific preclinical research. However, in the models it has been difficult to analyze simultaneously multiple cytokines associated with ischemia reperfusion injury and to investigate the mechanisms. Method: Porcine liver transplantation was performed by using donation one hour after cardiac death and 5-hour cold preservation. Serum levels of 9 cytokines including IFN-α, γ, IL-4, 6, 8, 10, IL-12p40, IL-1β and TNF-α were measured simultaneously by Multiplex immunobead assay technology at 30 minutes, 1, 2, 3 and 6hour after reperfusion of the liver graft. Results: Four transplantation were performed, and all of them had to be sacrificed within a day. Soon after reperfusion of the marginal graft, IL-6 and IL-12p40 were considerably expressed, one hour after reperfusion. There were no correlation between the cytokines and liver enzyme or time survived in this model. Conclusion: Multiplex immunobead assay successfully measured multiple cytokines simultaneously and identify specific ones in mini pig models. This latest method support enormous potentialities to investigate ischemia reperfusion injury with DCD liver transplantation