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UPMC Plans Study to Predict Transplant Tolerance

PITTSBURGH—November 15, 2000· by TNN Medical Reporter Virginia Baskerville

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute plan to launch an initiative to seek ways to predict transplant tolerance in patients.
The institute has been awarded $728,000 through the Immune Tolerance Network to study a group of transplant patients who are off immunosuppressive drugs in an attempt to develop laboratory tests predictive of transplant tolerance. The Immune Tolerance Network is a $144 million project supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International.
"The Pitt team was selected because of its ongoing contributions in transplant immunology and its body of research that has resulted in about 40 liver transplant recipients in a physician-controlled trial being able to be completely weaned off antirejection drugs," the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said in a statement. Those patients have been drug-free for a mean of 6.6 years.
The new project will enable further study of these and potentially other patients to determine how their transplanted organs continue to be accepted by their immune systems without the aid of drugs and to identify potential tests to predict whether patients can be successfully weaned from immunosuppressive drugs.
"We hope to yield a better understanding of the specific immunological process that occurs in these liver transplant patients who are off all immunosuppression. This will provide a 'roadmap' for clinicians, to help identify those for whom immunosuppression can be safely withdrawn," said coprincipal investigator Angus Thomson, PhD, DSc, of UPMC.
UPMC posts its statement a www.upmc.edu/NewsBureau/lisa/immune_tolerance_grant.htm.
The Immune Tolerance Network's website is at www.immunetolerance.org

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