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If you need a new liver, doctors have about twelve hours to transport it from a donor.
如果你需要一个新的肝脏，医生有大约12个小时的时间从捐赠者那里将器官运送过来。
That ticking clock severely limits the ability of doctors to get organs to patients.
时间对于医生为病人移植器官的能力起到了至关重要的作用。
Now researchers have demonstrated a method that kept rat livers viable up to four days.
现在研究人员展示的方法可以将鲜活的老鼠肝脏保存4天。
The scientists lowered the livers to below freezing temperatures, while flooding the tissue with antifreeze chemicals to prevent the formation of damaging ice crystals.
科学家们将肝脏温度降低到冰点以下，并把防冻剂喷洒在组织上，避免造成破坏性的冰晶形成。
But such cooling alone is not sufficient, due in part to the liver's wide variety of cell types and functions.
但是考虑到肝脏的各细胞类型及功能运作，仅仅这样的冷却是不够的。
So the researchers also used machine perfusion:
所以研究人员也使用了机器进行灌注：
as the livers were cooled they were flushed with solutions that kept them operational.
随着肝脏被冷却，他们同步进行保持所有细胞和功能运作的方案。
They were perfused again as they were brought back to above-freezing temps.
当把肝脏被带到高于冰点的环境中时，他们会再灌注一次。
All the rats that were implanted with 3-day-old livers survived for three months.
所有那些被移植已经保存3天肝脏的老鼠都活了3个月。
Nearly 60 percent of the rats with four-day-old livers survived.
几乎60%被植入保存的肝脏的老鼠都活了下来。
In contrast, no rats that received 3- and 4-day-old livers preserved by currently used methods survived.
相反，那些被移植了用一般方法保存3天或4天肝脏的老鼠，都没有幸存。
This work is an early step toward creating a system that could work in humans, which would dramatically improve the chances of getting organs to people who desperately need them.
这项研究是对适用于人体统的一个初步尝试，如果成功就可以极大提高急需器官移植病人成功救治的机率。
