A patent was issued to Professor Martin Yarmush entitled, "Methods and compositions for preserving tissues and organs” (US Patent number: 10575515). The invention describes methods and compositions to determine the viability of an organ for transplantation and other medical purposes. One aspect of the invention relates to a method for assessing the viability of an organ by measuring the energy parameters to determine the energy level of the organ by determining the stored cellular energy (e.g., ATP levels), and/or energy consumption over a particular time period of viability.
Another aspect of the invention relates methods to preserve or extend the time period of the viability of an organ using any combination of (i) preservation perfusion of the organ to prevent ischemic damage, (ii) chemical metabolic suppression of the organ, (iii) metabolic suppression by physical or environmental conditions, e.g., sub-zero non-freezing storage.