Advances in Kidney Transplantation

Powerful Patient, 2009 Week 12

Host: Joyce Graff, http://powerfulpatient.org, editor@vhl.org 800-767-4845

Beginning March 13, 2009

Listen Program guide for this show

Subscribe in a reader

Joyce speaks with Dr. David Sachs, Director of the Transplantation Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University.

About Our Guest

Dr. David Sachs is Director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Surgery and Immunology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

See his biography at http://www.transplantation2008.org/speakers/xeno_1.php

About Transplantation

Dr. Sachs and his colleagues are using an unconventional approach – transplanting a donor’s bone marrow along with the kidney.  They have proved that the problem of organ rejection can be mitigated without using immunosuppressive drugs, sparing transplant recipients a lifetime of devastating side effects.

Using the mixed chimera bone marrow approach, they “teach” the recipient’s body to “tolerate” the donor’s kidney.

Six years and five successful procedures later, the Mass General transplant team is beginning a new study in which 15 participants – five at Mass General, followed by 10 at Mass General and at two other centers – will receive kidneys from related or unrelated donors. Funded by the Immune Tolerance Network of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, the new grant expands upon the team’s landmark 2008 study involving four Mass General patients who underwent successful combined kidney and bone marrow transplants from related donors.

“We want to extend this wonderful benefit to more patients with kidney disease and to patients with diseases of other organs, and hopefully be able to increase the number of organs that are available in the future,” says Sachs, the principal investigator on the study. In fact, patients in need of kidney transplants have been contacting Sachs and his colleagues in hopes of being chosen to participate in the new study.

See the full report from the Massachusetts General Hospital:
http://www.massgeneral.org/transplant/about/newsarticle.aspx?id=1123

In the interview, Dr. Sachs mentions one of the success stories, Jennifer Searl, a young woman who received her second kidney transplant using his new methodology.  Read her story at http://www2.massgeneral.org/transplant/patient_story.htm

Is the study still recruiting candidates?

People interested in talking with the team about the possibility of being a subject in the study may contact Dr. Sachs’ office: