A woman’s uterus has been kept alive outside the body for the first time | MIT Technology Review
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The team behind the feat plan to study uterine disorders and the early stages of pregnancy—and potentially grow a human fetus.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “Think of this as a human body,” says Javier González. In front of me is essentially a metal box on wheels. Standing at around a meter in height, it reminds me of a stainless-steel counter in a restaurant kitchen. It is covered in flexible plastic tubing—which act as veins and arteries—connecting a series of transparent containers, the organs of this machine. What makes it extra special is the role of the cream-colored tub that sits on its surface. Ten months ago, González, a biomedical scientist who developed the device with his colleagues at the Carlos Simon Foundation, carefully placed a freshly donated human uterus in the tub. The team connected it to the device’s tubes and pumped in modified human blood. The device kept the uterus alive for a day—a new feat that could represent the first step to the long-term maintenance of uteruses outside the human body. The work has not yet been published. The team members want to keep donated human uteruses alive long enough to see a full menstrual cycle. They hope this will help them study diseases of the uterus and learn more about how embryos burrow their way into the organ’s lining at the start of a pregnancy. They also hope that future iterations of their device might one day sustain the full gestation of a human fetus. The machine is technically called PUPER, which stands for “preservation of the uterus in perfusion.” But González’s colleague Xavier Santamaria says the team has adopted a nickname for it: “...
