One Million Dollar Prize to Build New Livers: The Race Is Officially On

The
New Organ
Liver Prize competition has been officially launched by the
Methuselah Foundation with six teams competing. The Methuselah
Foundation Methuselah Foundation is a biomedical charity working to
extend healthy life, which among other goals includes enabling a
world where 90-year-olds are as healthy as 50-year-olds by
2030.

The winning team must figure out how to restore liver function
in a large mammal (cow, pig, sheep, or rabbit) using regenerative
or biotechnological means. The animals must live for at least 90
days with restored liver function. During the last 30 days of the
trial period, the test animals must operate within +/-20 percent of
their healthy weights and their regular mobility patterns, while
eating their normal diets. The competition ends on December 31,
2018.

From the press release:

Initial teams represent scientists from Harvard Medical School,
Massachusetts General Hospital, Northwick Park Institute for
Medical Research, University College of London, University of
Florida, University of Oxford, University of Pittsburgh, and
Yokohama City University. Additional teams are under review and
will be announced in the future.

New Organ Founder and Methuselah CEO David Gobel: “We are
gratified to see the initial interest in the Liver Prize. We are
doing this because of the millions who need new organs. Organ
disease, and the associated organ shortage, represents one of the
greatest medical challenges that can be solved. A scientific
foundation has been built over the last 15 years to pursue the
vision of organs on demand. It’s time for a significant societal
commitment to that vision.”

The prize teams are led by:

● Dr. Tahera Ansari (Team Hepavive): Pursuing the
‘decell-recell’ approach to bioengineering a liver.
● Dr. Stephen Badylak (Team Badylak): A pioneer in biologic
scaffolds using extracellular matrix.
● Dr. Eric Lagasse (Team Ectogenesis): Grew mini-livers inside the
lymph nodes of mice with liver disease.
● Dr. Bryon Petersen (Team Petersen): An authority on the role of
hepatic stem cells in liver pathology.
● Dr. Takanori Takebe (Team Organ Creative): Created tiny ‘liver
buds’ that grew and functioned in mice.
● Dr. Basak Uygun (Team HepaTx): First to report proof-of-principle
transplantation of engineered liver grafts.

Good luck competitors; now hurry up!