Exploratory road of liver xenotransplantation: from scientific research to clinical application

With the advancement of surgical technologies and the improvement of perioperative management, the survival rates of organ transplant recipients and grafts have been significantly elevated. Shortage of donor organs has become the main obstacle to further development of organ transplantation. Recently, kidney and heart xenotransplantation with genetically modified pigs as donors have entered clinical trials and achieved favorable results. Xenotransplantation has repeatedly become a hot spot in biomedical research. Compared with heart and kidney, the survival time of liver grafts from genetically modified pigs in non-human primates is shorter. Besides, experimental results are dramatically different. Hence, it is not eligible for clinical trials. Consequently, recent research progress in xenotransplantation was reviewed from surgical pattern selection, coagulation dysfunction and acute vascular rejection, advances in liver xenotransplantation were summarized, and the main problems hindering xenotransplantation from entering clinical trials and potential solutions were illustrated, aiming to provide reference for xenotransplantation from scientific research to clinical application.