Feature Channels: Transplantation

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Since 1968, UAB Medicine has performed more than 14,000 life-saving organ transplants.

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At 4 months old, Raegen was diagnosed with congenital nephrotic syndrome.Early on in Raegen Allard’s life, her mother, Francisca Allard, noticed something wasn’t quite right with her beautiful daughter. Raegen would seem upset after she ate and her stomach was enlarged. She also had a bruise around her belly button, which worried Allard further.

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Researchers at the National Eye Institute have discovered cellular mechanisms that help the 13-lined ground squirrel survive hibernation. Their findings could be a step toward extending storage of human donor tissues awaiting transplantation and protecting traumatic brain injury patients who undergo induced hypothermia. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health. The findings were published in the May 3 issue of Cell.

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Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with end-stage heart failure seeking OHT and LVAD implantation will be drastically affected if the proposed cuts are implemented, according to UAB research.

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Organ transplant patients and donors shared their extraordinary stories during Loyola Medicine's 27th annual Candle-lighting Ceremony. Among the speakers were a pastor who gave a kidney to a member of his church and a daughter who saved her mother's life by giving up a part of her liver.

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When concert pianist Misha Dichter developed a debilitating condition affecting his hands, it was life-shattering. But after two successful surgeries, the world-renowned virtuoso recently returned to Carnegie Hall for his first major solo performance in New York in almost two decades.

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Mayo Clinic的研究显示，移植的肝脏改变了受体的血液细胞的状况，减少了器官排斥反应的可能性。 这些发现发表在Kidney International杂志上。

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Doctors at the University of Illinois Hospital have cured seven adult patients of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder primarily affecting the black community, using stem cells from donors previously thought to be incompatible, thanks to a new transplant treatment protocol.

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A new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows an investigational drug prevents graft-versus-host disease, a dangerous side effect of stem cell transplantation.

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Many soldiers returning from combat bear visible scars, or even lost limbs, caused by blasts from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. However, some servicemen also return with debilitating hidden injuries -- the loss of all or part of their genitals. Now, the Johns Hopkins reconstructive surgery team that performed the country's first bilateral arm transplant in a wounded warrior has successfully performed the first total penis and scrotum transplant in the world.

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El estudio descubrió que cuando los pacientes se someten al trasplante doble, el hígado tiene un efecto protector sobre el riñón.

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Dr. Giuliano Testa, principal investigator of the uterine transplant clinical trial, has been named to Time Magazine's ‘TIME 100’ – Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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• Megan Gagliardi was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy at 18 years old. • Dilated cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the heart’s ability to pump blood is decreased because the left ventricle — the heart’s main pumping chamber — is enlarged and weakened. • Gagliardi received a heart transplant on her 19th birthday and is doing well six years later.

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For decades, transplant experts have observed that liver transplant recipients often need less anti-rejection medication, known as immunosuppressive drugs, than recipients of other solid organs. Similarly, when patients receive a multiple-organ transplant that includes the liver along with any other organ, they need less immunosuppressive medication and have less incidence of rejection even if they are highly sensitive to cellular bad actors, known as antigens, from the donor organs.

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• Among 655 healthcare providers at dialysis clinics in the United States, 19% were aware of racial disparities in waitlisting. • Although a quarter of dialysis facilities had >5% racial difference in waitlisting within their own facilities, only 5% of the providers were aware of the disparity at their own facilities.

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Adaptable Ortho Innovations, LLC, a novel medical device startup rooted in a surgeon-engineer collaboration, earned second place recognition in the inaugural Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) Business Plan Competition.

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New research out of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and The Ohio State University has identified rare variants in a number of novel genes that may help improve risk prediction and prognosis for patients undergoing BMT.

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Experts in pediatric kidney disease have published a new staging system to help doctors better predict the length of time until a child with chronic kidney disease will need to undergo a kidney transplant or start receiving dialysis. Although this type of prognostic guide exists for adults, this is the first such tool specific to children.

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• The risk of death due to infectious causes after kidney transplantation in Finland has dropped by half since the 1990s. • Common bacterial infections remain the most frequent cause of infection-related deaths among transplant recipients.

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Krista Lentine, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of internal medicine at Saint Louis University, will receive a prestigious award from the National Kidney Foundation for her research and advocacy for living kidney donation.

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Loyola Medicine's hearing center reached another milestone recently by performing its 500th cochlear implant.

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By modifying a muscle transplant operation, Johns Hopkins surgeons report they are able to restore authentic facial expressions of joy -- wide and even smiles -- to selected patients with one-sided facial muscle paralysis due to birth defects, stroke, tumors or Bell’s palsy.

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Updated statistics from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration out this month show that over the previous year, there has been an increase in cases of an uncommon form of cancer associated with breast implants. Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey’s Andrew Evens, DO, MSc, FACP, shares some insight.

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Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated the successful implementation of a prosthetic system that uses a person’s own memory patterns to facilitate the brain’s ability to encode and recall memory.

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• Disadvantaged patients with kidney failure who received guidance from a trained navigator with a degree in social work were more likely to be eventually put on the transplant waiting list than control patients. • The difference in waitlisting among intervention vs. control patients became evident only after 500 days, however, at which point intervention patients were 3.3 times more likely to be waitlisted after 500 days.

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The drug, regadenoson, is already commonly used to image cardiac patients’ hearts. But the UVA research suggests it could be put to another, lifesaving purpose.

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A UT Southwestern study in mice provides new clues about how a class of anti-rejection drugs used after organ transplants may also slow the progression of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

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Highlights • Between 2005 and 2015, the unadjusted rate of living kidney donation in the United States was 30.1 and 19.3 per million population in women and men, respectively. • After adjusting for differences in age, race, the incidence of kidney failure, and geographic factors, the incidence of donation was 44% higher in women. • Over time, the incidence of donation was stable in women but declined in men. The decline was most marked in men from lower income groups.

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In a small study, doctors at Johns Hopkins have successfully transplanted 10 hepatitis C-infected kidneys into patients without hepatitis C and prevented the patients from becoming infected by hepatitis C. The success of these transplants could mean more organs being available for the nearly 100,000 people in the U.S. currently waiting for a kidney transplant.

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UHN now largest adult transplant program in North America. University Health Network’s Multi-Organ Transplant Program reached a milestone of completing 639 adult transplants in 2017, ranking first in volume for adult transplants in North America.

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Each year in the U.S., more than 40,000 patients need a liver transplant because of complications associated with cirrhosis and liver failure. Alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) alone accounts for nearly 30 percent of all liver transplants, yet up to 50 percent of patients with alcoholism return to drinking within five years of undergoing a liver transplant. Many transplant centers now require a minimum of six months of alcohol abstinence prior to placing candidates on the United Organ Network Sharing waiting list. This pilot study examined the use of text messaging as an alcohol relapse-prevention intervention for patients with ALD scheduled to undergo a liver transplant.

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A pancreas transplant cured Anthony Law of his life-threatening "brittle" diabetes. Before his transplant, Mr. Law had extreme swings in blood sugar levels. His family had to wake him up every two hours to ensure his sugars were in a normal range. Today, he is off insulin and his blood sugars are steady.

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Michael “Shawn” Findley, a 44-year-old amputee with a wiring harness emerging from his upper left arm, is working with a UT Southwestern team to help change the way robotic hand biofeedback occurs. Ultimately, he hopes this research may lead to the closest thing to feeling in the hands of every amputee.

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To expand access to life-saving liver transplants for those in need, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine have unveiled a new living donor liver transplant program. It performed its first such transplant with success in late January.

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Nur Hossain, a graduate research assistant from the University of Oklahoma, was named the 2018 Southern Plain’s Transportation Center Outstanding Student of the Year – one of the most prestigious awards given by the SPTC under the National University Transportation Center program.

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Before medical science can bioengineer human organs in a lab for therapeutic use, two remaining hurdles are ensuring genetic stability—so the organs are free from the risk of tumor growth—and producing organ tissues of sufficient volume and size for viable transplant into people. Scientists report in Stem Cell Reports achieving both goals with a new production method for bioengineered human gut and liver tissues.

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SLAS Discovery (formerly the Journal of Biomolecular Screening) and SLAS Technology (formerly the Journal of Laboratory Automation), both published by SLAS (Society of Laboratory Automation and Screening) in partnership with SAGE Publishing, hosted a special reception to celebrate the 2018 SLAS Journal Achievement Award honorees on Feb. 6 at SLAS2018, the SLAS International Conference and Exhibition, held Feb. 3-7, 2018, in San Diego, CA.

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Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) performed a record number of heart transplants in 2017, surpassing the 2016 milestone and securing its place as the second-busiest heart transplant program in the country.

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Moffitt Cancer Center researchers are trying to identify new drug targets to reduce the risk of GVHD. Their new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows a drug that targets the protein JAK2 may reduce the risk of GVHD.

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A deceased donor kidney has been preserved and kept healthy outside the body in a device that mimics the body’s physiological functions and successfully transplanted into a human, for the first time in North America.

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The Transplant Institute at NYU Langone Health launches new lung transplant program.

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• A new method is useful for assessing how well individual dialysis facilities are referring patients for kidney transplantation. • When the method was applied to dialysis facilities in Georgia, researchers found that most of the variation in referrals for transplantation were due to characteristics within the dialysis facilities rather than patient characteristics.

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Contrary to long-established dogma, the eye can host an active immune response that could both heal injury and contribute to loss of vision.

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Houston Methodist Hospital performed its 1000th heart transplant. The hospital's first was performed by Dr. Michael DeBakey in 1968 as part of the world's first multi-organ transplant. The patient is a 23-year old man who suffers from Becker's Muscular Dystrophy, a rare form of the disease that damages the heart.

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Despite efforts over the past two decades to increase the number of black and Hispanic patients receiving kidney transplants from related or unrelated living donors, these racial/ethnic minority patients are still much less likely to undergo such transplants than white patients, Johns Hopkins researchers report. In fact, the investigators say, the disparities have worsened in the last 20 years.

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Parents’ major concerns often included misunderstandings about medical care, potential suffering and cost related to child organ donation, new national poll finds.

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140 patients received a life-saving kidney or combined kidney-pancreas transplant in a year

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Temple University Hospital (TUH) performed 131 lung transplants in calendar year 2017, making it the number 1 volume program in the nation according to data just released by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).

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In a commentary published in the Jan. 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, UC Davis researcher William Murphy expressed cautious optimism about efforts to genetically engineer hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to temporarily resist cell death during transplantation. While these gene therapy approaches could dramatically improve patient outcomes, Murphy argues that their risks must be carefully studied in diverse models.