Shadowing Practice: Artificial Liver Program: Mayo Clinic Radio - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Welcome back to Mayo Clinic Radio.
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I'm Dr. Tom Shives.
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And I'm Tracy McRae.
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Tracy, every year, 40 ,000 people die of liver disease in the U .S.
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And the only proven therapy for end -stage liver disease is still a liver transplant.
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Unfortunately, there aren't enough organs to go around for those who need them.
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In fact, there are more than 150 ,000 people who are on the waiting list for a donor liver.
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Now, hopefully, treatment for liver disease is about to change for the better.
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Research at Mayo Clinic is focusing on new regenerative liver therapies to help repair diseased livers
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and improve the treatment options for liver disease patients.
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Here to discuss is Dr. Scott Nyberg, a transplant surgeon at Mayo Clinic.
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Dr. Nyberg is the director of the liver program at the Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Medicine
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and head of Mayo Clinic's artificial liver program.
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Welcome to the program, Dr. Nyberg.
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It's nice to meet you.
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It's great to be here, Tracy and Tom.
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Thank you for having me.
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Yeah, you bet.
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You have been studying the liver and liver disease for a long time, long enough to get all those titles, right?
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I started back in the early 80s, probably.
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I was both a chemical engineer and then a biomedical engineer.
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Had a mentor who said with that engineering background, why don't you build a liver dialysis machine?
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I asked him, how should I do that?
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That was in 1989, and he said, you figure it out.
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You're the engineer.
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So I've been working on this for almost 30 years.
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Well, I want to learn a lot more about the artificial liver program, but before we go there, we should probably just set the table.
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What is liver disease?
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What causes liver disease?
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I mean, there are many causes.
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They can range from Tylenol overdose, a common drug like Tylenol, alcohol.
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People are familiar with that, along with genetic causes.
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In the United States, I would say obesity is becoming a number one cause.
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Overweight contributes to a disease called NASH.
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It had been hepatitis C.
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Now there are pretty effective treatments for hepatitis C, so we're seeing a decrease.
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But the number one cause would be NASH, followed by alcohol, and then these others.
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Now explain NASH to us.
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And you mentioned that obesity is becoming a more common cause of liver disease.
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How does obesity cause liver disease?
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And I suspect that NASH is the answer.
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Right.
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It's not fully understood as far as the mechanisms, but there has been this association with as Americans and people around the world become heavier,
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there's more liver disease.
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If a pathologist looks at a biopsy of a NASH liver, it looks similar to an alcoholic liver, so it's probably a nutritional problem.
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Where too many calories cause an inflammatory response and do this over a long period of time,
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there becomes scarring and eventually cirrhosis and the manifestations of end -stage liver disease.
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And cirrhosis is pretty much just scarring of the liver.
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Advanced scarring to a point where the liver isn't able to regenerate.
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Fortunately, a healthy liver, if we cut it in half, will grow back to a full size within a couple of weeks.
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That's a normal response, but due to the scarring of fibrosis and cirrhosis,
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that regenerative response is impaired and the only real treatment for those end -stage livers is a liver transplant currently.
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Does NASH stand for something?
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Non -alcoholic steatohepatitis.
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So it looks pathologically like alcoholic liver injury,
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but it's non -alcoholic related presumably to diet and weight.
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How long can people live with liver disease before they need a transplant?
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well we have a scoring system now
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that was developed here at mayo called the meld score initially
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it was called the mayo end -stage liver disease score to
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predict how long people would survive what's their likelihood of being alive in two months
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it's been adopted nationally for organ allocation
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because it's very good at predicting the name was changed they took mayo out of the name
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and now it's just the model for end -stage liver disease so that's probably the best predictor.
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And in transplant, we use that score to determine who has highest priority.
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So it ranges from zero to 40, where if you have a score of 40, it's unlikely you're going to survive more than a few weeks.
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What can make if a patient is not eligible for transplant?
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I mean, there's being on the list means that you're eligible, but why would patients not be eligible for transplant?
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I mean, there's a variety of reasons.
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If you're an alcoholic that continues to drink
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and haven't recovered you wouldn't be eligible
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that wouldn't be a wise use of an organ
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if you have a disease that may involve other organs that's not corrected by a liver transplant
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or if you have a cancer that's spread outside of the liver that we wouldn't be able to help you and
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transplant an immunosuppressive patient you could actually shorten their life and that
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so there are a number
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you can be too old though we don't have a cutoff as far as age goes
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so you're still doing a lot of liver transplant right and
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and a fair number of those are from deceased donors
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but also you're using live donors yeah here at mayo
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we have a large living donor program one of the largest in the united states
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which means we do over 20 per year of the 130 liver transplants that we do.
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So that's a living donor, a family member, our friend who donates half of their liver.
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Two weeks later, the liver has regenerated, did you say, to its normal size?
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Probably two weeks in the donor, we do CAT scans to measure the volume.
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And they're within 90 % of the original volume within two weeks.
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So it's very rapid.
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In my lab, we have a number of animal models studying regeneration
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and we see this very quickly also all right what's new
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and regenerative medicine
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and artificial liver well here at mayo the the biggest problem in transplant is the shortage of organs
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so the things we do in regenerative medicine are to address
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that shortage of organs one option is a liver dialysis machine to allow the the liver to regenerate
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and hopefully avoid a liver transplant so that would be
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that would save the liver it could be used for someone else
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and avoid big surgery
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and all the immunosuppression lifelong immunosuppression for a patient that'd be a patient maybe with a tylenol overdose
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we also have a special pig that we've developed a genetically engineered pig
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and the goal there is to grow transplantable human livers in this pig sounds science fiction
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but in my lab we recently had a pig named eddie who beautiful a little piggy
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if you look at my instagram site
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you'll see a picture of eddie who essentially was created by a stem cell transplant into a day four embryo
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and this is sort of the future i see of organ production
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and then we're also
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so this is hopefully someday eddie's liver can be transplanted into a human eddie will eddie
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and pigs like eddie will be incubators to grow human livers.
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The concept would be to take a cell, reprogram it into a cell from a patient liver disease, reprogram it into a stem cell,
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fuse it with an embryo, and then grow a liver from that human stem cell.
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Whoa.
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I got to sit down.
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Oh, I am sitting down.
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Good.
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That's good.
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How are you using the patient's own liver cell?
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Is that what you're saying when you take a cell to help?
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In this case, you could even take a blood sample, like a white blood cell from just a blood sample.
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The Nobel Prize for Medicine about four years ago was a way to reprogram cells, adult cells, to become stem cells.
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And the theory would be that you could use those stem cells to grow livers.
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Well, hopefully you and Eddie will get the Nobel Prize next year.
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I think we're still a little ways off.
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eddie and pigs like eddie the other option that we're working with a local company is to take
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livers decellularize them and then repopulate them with cells from a patient
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so again you could avoid the need for immunosuppression
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so these would be a tissue engineered liver
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that would be identical to the patient so they wouldn't need an anti -rejection drug after the transplant
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If it works using your own cells, you shouldn't need to.
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We had a paper recently published in one of the science journals, Science Translational Medicine, showing that this concept would work in pigs,
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and it's a matter of scaling it up to humans.
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It's all really exciting.
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Thanks so much for being with us.
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Thank you very much.
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An update on the treatment of liver disease with Dr. Scott Nyberg,
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transplant surgeon and director of the liver program at the Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Medicine
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and head of Mayo Clinic's artificial liver program.
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Thanks, Dr. Nyberg.
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Yeah, thank you, Tom, Tracy.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Artificial Liver Program: Mayo Clinic Radio”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: liver, disease, transplant, cell, mayo. This video has 136 sentences and 1533 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:08. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 76% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| transplant verb | /tɹænzˈplænt/ | To uproot (a growing plant), and plant it in another place. |
| organ noun | /ˈɔːɡən/ | The larger part of an organism, composed of tissues that perform similar functions. |
| liver noun | /ˈlɪvɚ/ | A large organ in the body that stores and metabolizes nutrients, destroys toxins and produces bile. It is responsible for thousands of biochemical reactions. |
| donor noun | /ˈdəʊnə/ | One who makes a donation. |
| stem noun | /stɛm/ | The stock of a family; a race or generation of progenitors. |
| alcoholic noun | /ˌæl.kəˈhɔ.lɪk/ | A person who is addicted to alcohol. |
| eligible adjective | /ˈɛl.ɪ.d͡ʒɪ.bəl/ | Allowed to and meeting the necessary conditions required to participate in or be chosen for something. |
| artificial adjective | /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/ | Man-made; made by humans; of artifice. |
| scar noun | /skɑɹ/ | A permanent mark on the skin, sometimes caused by the healing of a wound. |
| pig noun | /ˈpɪɡ/ | Any of several mammalian species of the family Suidae, having cloven hooves, bristles and a snout adapted for digging; especially the domesticated animal Sus… |
| obesity noun | /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/ | The state of being obese. |
| surgeon noun | /ˈsɝd͡ʒən/ | One who performs surgery; a doctor who performs operations on people or animals. |
| predict verb | /pɹɪˈdɪkt/ | To make a prediction: to forecast, foretell, or estimate a future event on the basis of knowledge and reasoning; to prophesy a future event on the basis of… |
| shortage noun | /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/ | A lack or deficiency; an insufficient amount. |
| overdose noun | /ˈəʊvə(ɹ)ˌdəʊs/ | An excessive and dangerous dose of a drug. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. | |
| do over verb | /ˈduˌoʊvɚ/ | To cover with; to smear or spread on to. |
| start back in verb | To resume insulting, confronting and/or shouting at someone. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It's nice to meet you.
- I asked him, how should I do that?
- I mean, there's a variety of reasons.
- How are you using the patient's own liver cell?
- Is that what you're saying when you take a cell to help?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been studying · I've been working |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is impaired · was developed · was called |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been · it's been adopted · haven't recovered |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | those who need · people who are · friend who donates |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 28 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we're, wouldn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, tissue /ˈtɪʃ.(j)u/
- Long words — get the stress right: alcoholic /ˌæl.kəˈhɔ.lɪk/, eligible /ˈɛl.ɪ.d͡ʒɪ.bəl/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, obesity /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/, hepatitis /ˌhɛpəˈtaɪ̯tɪs/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like transplant, organ, liver.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.