Developing machines to keep donor livers viable for days outside the body
A shortage of donor livers leaves patients with liver cancer or liver failure without access to transplants. Limited preservation time and poor initial quality assessments mean many donated livers are discarded, further restricting the supply of usable organs.
Apersys is developing an automated machine to keep donor livers viable for days outside the body. The platform gives transplant and research teams time to assess and recover organs before transplantation, and to test drug candidates on perfused human organs.
What stands out about Apersys
Liver4Life's three-day liver preservation enabled a human transplant; the published case reported normal quality of life at one year.
Names AP-HP’s Chaire Innovation BOPA as its first customer; Prof. Eric Vibert describes it as the first research group with the device.
Apersys is a Swiss spin-out from the Liver4Life project at Wyss Zurich, backed by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich.
Co-founder and clinical advisor Pierre-Alain Clavien is an MD/PhD and hepatobiliary surgeon, bringing direct transplant expertise.
Co-founders bring PhDs in regenerative medicine, biomedicine, process engineering, and chemical and macromolecular engineering.
Selected for MassChallenge Switzerland's 2025 accelerator programme, as confirmed by Wyss Zurich.
Won a 2025 Red Dot award for interface and user-experience design in the Design Concept discipline, working with Custom Medical.
Co-founder Pierre-Alain Clavien received the Juan Calvo Award for contributions to hepatobiliary and transplant surgery.
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