AST Fellows Symposium on Transplantation Medicine

AST Fellows Symposium on Transplantation Medicine

Who gets kidney first?- the thoughts in 2011

Organ allocation system always has been going down the list on a first come first basis. A discussion has been ongoing in the transplant circles and organizations on age based distribution of organs. Hence, someone who is young getting a "better" kidney then someone "older".  Is that reasonable or is that age based discrimination?

Take a look at the reactions of many below. There must be a better way!

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/03/01/allocating-kidney-organs

Then look at this opinion
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2011/03/06/20110306newcomb-transplants-07.html

Kidney transplant and donation cancer risks

What are the risks of getting cancer from the donor?
Check out this report from UK regarding a recent case.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/mar/22/kidney-transplants-donated-organs-cancer-risks

Kidney Transplant Recipient Infected With HIV From Live Donor - Procedure Needs Reviewing

Kidney Transplant Recipient Infected With HIV From Live Donor - Procedure Needs Reviewing

Hematuria Post Kidney Transplantation

An entity often not talked about and not much out there in the literature. a nice review below by Dr.Krish.

Hematuria post transplant

View more presentations from Nephrology, NSLIJ

Elimination of anti rejection medicaitons

ASN news recently reported a study that is ongoing using specially processed stem cells from the same kidney donor being transplanted along with the kidney to that recipient, allowing that to continue in chimerism leading to an early presumed tolerance and hence no anti rejection medications for long term.
This concept is not new and has been attempted in the recent past. In 2008, NEJM paper by David Sachs et al showed that 5 patients could come off all immunosuppresion after a combined stem cell and kidney transplantation. This theory is used in myeloma treatment as well when patients get an allogenic and kidney transplant at the same time allowing to help both the organs of treatment.
A similar concept was presented recently in CJASN Feb 2011 issue about using autologous  mesanchymal stromal cells during kidney transplants. They showed that in two patients, this allowed engraftment of T regs in the peripheral blood and control memory CD8 T cells function.  In vitro studies have shown that mesenchymal stromal cells abrogate allo immune response  and could function as anti T cell agents in a "different" manner.


here is some older data on this topic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18216355
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20605588
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20930086

Tissue Engineering Renal Tissue

The Regenerative Division at Wake Forrest University has been doing some ground breaking work.
One study done there allowed for some initial work regarding re generation of kidney cells.  This system involves the cultivation of expanded primary renal cells in a three-dimensional collagen-based culture system. After one week of growth, individual renal cells began to form renal structures resembling tubules and glomeruli. Histologically, these structures show phenotypic resemblance to native kidney structures. The reconstituted tubules stained positively for Tamm-Horsfall protein, which is expressed in the thick ascending limb of Henle's Loop and distal convoluted tubules. These results show that renal structures can be reconstituted in a three-dimensional culture system, which may eventually be used for renal cell therapy applications. The article listed below presents a three-dimensional culture system that allows for reconstituting single renal cells into kidney structures in vitro, thus providing a controlled platform for renal tissue formation in vivo.

ref:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18845258

Bortezomib for desensitization!

Donor specific alloantibody producing plasma cells might be a good target for proteosomic inhibition by bortezomib. Bortezomib has some data in case series and reports of treating antibody mediated rejection. A recent study published in Transplantation 2011 discussed case series of 4 patients with extremely high DSA and couldn't just get apheresis alone.  They received 4 doses of bortezomib alone in one group and other 4 received 16 doses and  plasma exchange.  The response of these 8 patients was compared to 8 patients with plasma exchange alone.  Bortezomib alone didn't do much but bortezomib + plasma exchange did better than just plasma exchange alone in terms of DSA decrease.  This might lead to more protocols that might develop using this agent for treatment of desensitization.
This study is small and not well designed. IVIG has been used in many centers and Anti CD20 agents as well. Is it bortezomib alone that is doing the magic or is it that we just need two agents along with plasma exchange.  So plasma exchange + IVIG pr plasma exchange + rituximab or plasma exchange + bortezomib.

Have a look

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21283064

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20121729