Enrollment is underway for trials at the National Institute of Health (NIH) that will test potential new methods to prevent the rejection of transplanted and organs and tissues without the need for chronic immunosuppression or with a greatly reduced need for immunosuppression.
The trials will involve patients with renal failure who need a kidney or a kidney-pancreas transplant and patients with diabetes who need a pancreatic islet cell transplant. Trials involving patients who have already received transplants are also being planned. The studies will be conducted at the new NIH Organ/Tissue Transplant Research Center and, in addition to NIH investigators, will involve researchers representing the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Naval Medical Research Center, and the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami.
"The investigators are particularly interested in agents that modulate the cell-signaling pathway that triggers immune activation and the eventual rejection of transplanted tissue," the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) said in a statement (www.niddk.nih.gov/new/newsbref/transpla.htm).
In one trial, researchers will study immune modulation therapy in patients receiving a kidney transplant for end-stage renal disease. In the other trial, investigators plan to transplant islet cells in patients with diabetes caused by a pancreatectomy or maturity onset diabetes of youth that has been documented by genetic testing.
"The new transplant initiative is not wed to any one theory but to the proposition that graft acceptance can be achieved without long-term immunosuppression. For the time being, though, all patients currently under the care of a transplant physician or transplant surgeon are most strongly encouraged to take their medicines as prescribed with the hope that a better future is coming," said David Harlan, MD, head of the NIDDK's Transplant Research and Autoimmunity Branch.
For Your Information:
Persons interested in enrolling in the clinical studies can call the patient recruitment and public liaison office at the NIH Clinical Center at (800) 411-1222.
The July 13 issue of The NIH Record posts a story about the new transplant research center at the NIH at www.nih.gov/news/NIH-Record/07_13_99/story04.htm.
Also see "NIH to Test Ways to Block Rejection Without Immunosuppression" at Transplant News Network, January 1, 1999.
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