News & Events: Increasing Supply of Donor Organs

The Atlantic reports on the difficulties in the current climate of conducting donor-intervention research due to issues of informed consent, disagreements over what constitutes human subject research, and conflicting views of Institutional Review Boards (IRB) spread across multiple centers with patients putatively impacted by the research protocol. Moreover, doctors must test the experimental interventions designed to improve outcomes within the crucible of a short time window, given that a donated organ is suitable for transplantation for only a limited mumber of hours.  Doctors have a [...]

President Barack Obama signs the HOPE Act legislation in November 2013. Peter Stock (far left) had earlier testified before Congress in support of the legislation, which overturned a federal ban on HIV-to-HIV transplants. Photo by Evan Vucci UCSF News reports on the epic battle, led by UCSF transplant surgeon Peter G. Stock, M.D., Ph.D., to repeal long-standing federal and state laws banning HIV-to-HIV organ transplantation, this after having served as lead Principal Investigator on a landmark clinical trial demonstrating the feasibility and clinical benefit of such transplants, and, in [...]

UCSF News reports on a just published study in the The New England Journal of Medicine in which mild hypothermia in deceased organ donors was found to significantly reduce delayed graft function in kidney transplant recipients compared with normal body temperature. The lead author of the study is Claus Niemann, MD, Professor of Anesthesia and Surgery at UCSF, and co-Director of the Ischemic Organ Injury Lab. The findings in the study could lead to an increase in the availability of kidneys for transplant. Mild hypothermia in deceased organ donors significantly reduces delayed graft [...]

In excess of 90,000 people are on the waiting list for kidney transplants, fewer than 17,000 receive one each year, and about 4,500 die on the waiting list. Even where a relative or friend is willing to donate a kidney, the kidney may not be a biological match. To address this problem, paired kidney exchange programs were created. Although it has been more than a decade since the first paired kidney exchange took place in the US, there is still no uniform system for these exchanges. Sandy Feng, M.D., Ph.D., a transplant surgeon at UCSF, is currently organizing the Consensus Conference on [...]

UCSF News reports on the award of a $2 million grant by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to a team led by Claus Niemann, MD, Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care and co-Director of the Ischemic Organ Injury Lab to improve outcomes in organ donor transplantation.  The grant was awarded to Niemann and his collaborators including John Feiner, MD, as well as Ryutaro Hirose, MD, and John Roberts, MD, chief of the UCSF Transplant Service. Also collaborating on the project are the California Transplant Donor Network and Darren [...]

"People infected with the AIDS virus can safely receive a kidney transplant, researchers reported on Wednesday. The finding, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, is good news for people with HIV who are more prone to kidney disease, in part because of the drugs they must take to stay healthy. Before drug cocktails turned HIV from a death sentence to a chronic condition, patients were not eligible to receive a kidney. But now they can. 'Patient and graft survival are really pretty good and it approximates the general population,' Dr. Peter Stock of the University of [...]

UCSF News reports on the the difficult choices that patients, families and doctors face because of the shortage of donated organs for transplantation. A difficult conundrum for the nation's transplant patients was aired September 22 when the news program California Connected featured UCSF's Liver Transplant Program. The story, produced by Jon Dann for public television stations KQED and KCET, highlights the difficult choices that patients, families and doctors face because of the shortage of donated organs for transplantation. Reporter Bob Jimenez pointed out that this shortage in one [...]