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Objective We subject to establish a stable and practical normothermic machine perfusion （NMP）system, as well as to investigate the effect and its mechanism of NMP in alleviating the ischemia reperfusion injury of donation after cardiac death（DCD）grafts. Methods Ten Bama miniature pigs clamped right renal artery underwent 30 mins warm ischemia and were randomly allocated to two groups. In the group A, kidneys underwent 8-hour NMP preservation. In the group B, kidneys were immediately perfused with UW solution and preserved with this cold storage for 8 hours. kidney transplantation was performed in both groups. Then the two groups underwent autologous renal transplantation. The survival rate, the serum biochemical markers, the histopathological changes and the expression of cytokines were compared between these two groups. Results The level of tumor necrosis factor-α（TNF-α）, cysteinyl aspartate specific proteinase-3（Caspas-3）, endotoxin-1（ET-1）in group A was lower than those of group B, and the proportion of apoptotic cells measured by TUNEL method was also significantly lower than that of group B（P ＜ 0.05）, The levels of serum creatinine（SCr）, TNF-α and Caspase-3 in group A were significantly lower than those in group B when 6 hours after bloodstream was opened and the pathological examination demonstrated that the injury of the kidney in group A was slighter than that in group B after 8-hour preservation and reperfusion Conclusion NMP storage could significantly alleviate the ischemia reperfusion injury of pig DCD kidneys. Its mechanism was that NMP could mimic the physiological environment of organs, maintain the cellular metabolism, reduce the expression of inflammatory cytokines after preservation and reperfusion.