Revolutionary liver failure treatment

December 22, 2025

The UK’s National Health Service is launching a major clinical trial of a potentially life-saving treatment for people with acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) a severe, often fatal form of end-stage liver disease where the organ suddenly stops working, leading to multiorgan failure and a very high risk of death. Existing options are extremely limited, with liver transplants being the only reliable cure for a tiny fraction of patients.

The new approach centres on a device called Dialive, developed by a University College London spin-out called Yaqrit, which works in a way similar to kidney dialysis but is designed specifically to help the failing liver and the rest of the body recover. Instead of filtering toxins from the kidneys, Dialive cleans the blood of harmful substances and removes dysfunctional albumin a crucial liver-produced proteinwhile replacing it with clean, functional albumin. This gives the liver time and a healthier environment to regenerate and recover.
Doctors describe ACLF as a ticking clock: most patients aren’t diagnosed until it’s already serious, and about 70 per cent die within 28 days with current care. Standard treatments can only stabilise patients temporarily, and there’s a desperate need for new therapies that help the liver heal without immediately requiring a transplant.

The NHS trial, backed by a £2.2 million grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research, will enrol 72 critically ill patients across 13 major hospitals in the UK. Participants will receive up to seven Dialive sessions over ten days, with treatment starting early next year. Doctors hope that Dialive will not only increase short-term survival but also reduce hospital stays and improve overall recovery compared with standard care. Preliminary trials including a smaller first-in-human study have already suggested that Dialive is safe and may help reverse ACLF faster than existing treatments, improving key clinical markers and reducing systemic inflammation. That research indicated that patients given Dialive saw faster resolution of liver failure compared with those on standard care, offering real promise if the larger trial confirms these results.

Experts in hepatology emphasise that ACLF is rising worldwide, driven by factors like obesity, alcohol-related liver disease, and hepatitis infections, making the search for effective therapies more urgent than ever. Around 2 million people in the UK live with serious liver disease, and many are at risk of progressing to life-threatening ACLF without better treatments.
If the Dialive trial is successful, it could transform how liver failure is treated globally, potentially offering a bridge to recovery without the need for transplants in many cases. That would mark a massive shift in a field where survival odds have barely improved for decades.

The trial results, expected in the next couple of years, will determine whether this innovation moves from research to standard NHS care, giving new hope to thousands of patients and their families who currently face bleak prospects with end-stage liver disease.