By Victoria Stern
Patients who need a new liver to survive must hope that they are one of the approximately 13,000 liver transplant recipients in the United States and Europe each year. But with 30,000 people on waiting lists, and with only ice keeping livers for transplantation viable for up to 14 hours, the odds are not always in the patients’ favor. Each year, more than 2,000 livers don’t survive the journey to their new home.
“Preserving organs by cooling them down is far