Division of Transplantation Assistant Professor David Al-Adra, MD, PhD, has a long-term goal: to become an independently funded researcher with expertise in how the immune system responds to a transplanted organ and how this response might be altered to decrease both organ rejection and the need for patients to be on long-term anti-rejection drugs. He is now one step closer to that goal after being awarded a two-year, $200,000 Transition to Independence grant from KidneyCure, the American Society of Nephrology’s Foundation for Kidney Research. Al-Adra will use the grant to study a protein that is known to decrease the immune system’s response and was developed by his collaborator in the Department of Medicine, Dr. Jacques Galipeau.
“This novel protein, which we call PIDO, is not naturally present in the cells of our organs,” Al-Adra explained. “But if we can manipulate cells to over-express it before a donor organ is transplanted, we may be able to prevent an organ recipient’s immune system from attacking the organ after it has been transplanted.”
To test this hypothesis, Al-Adra plans to study a rat model of kidney transplantation, first by removing a kidney from a donor rat and housing it in a device that keeps it at normal body temperature and provides it with all of the oxygen and nutrients it would normally receive. While in this device, his team will manipulate the kidney cells to begin over-expressing PIDO. They will then transplant the kidney and assess the recipient rat’s immune response for signs of kidney rejection. If they find that manipulating PIDO reduces the chance of a transplanted kidney being rejected, this would then set the stage for studies to determine whether it is a safe and effective strategy in larger animal models.
“These animal-based studies will help us determine whether manipulating PIDO is something that could or should ultimately be tested in humans and on other types of organs,” said Al-Adra. “The need is dire – we have over 100,000 people on the kidney waiting list but currently only about 23,000 kidney transplants are performed each year. Because of the shortage of donor kidneys, we really need to find ways to reduce the risk of rejection for the limited number of kidneys that become available for transplant.”