The blood type of a human kidney has been changed for the first time ever, which could have enormous implications for the future of organ transplants. Those in need of a kidney can spend years on dialysis as they wait for a donor with the same blood type, but a team of researchers at Cambridge University have found a way to convert kidneys into type O, the universal blood type. After keeping the kidneys artificially alive, scientists bathed them in a chemical cocktail, removing the antigen markers that identified them as type A or B and resetting them to type O. There are a few regulatory and ethical issues to unpick, so it’s uncertain how soon the technique can become widely adopted.

While we have you… American actress Anne Heche was taken off life support yesterday after a match for organ donation was found. The award-winning TV and film star died of injuries from a fiery car crash in Los Angeles on 5 August. She was 53yo.