PET PET
  • My Account
  • Subscribe
Become a Friend Donate
  • About Us
    • People
    • Press Office
    • Our History
  • Get Involved
    • Become a Friend of PET
    • Volunteer
    • Campaigns
    • Writing Scheme
    • Partnership and Sponsorship
    • Advertise with Us
  • Donate
    • Become a Friend of PET
  • BioNews
    • News
    • Comment
    • Reviews
    • Elsewhere
    • Topics
    • Glossary
    • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
  • Engagement
    • Policy and Projects
      • Resources
    • Education
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
    • People
    • Press Office
    • Our History
  • Get Involved
    • Become a Friend of PET
    • Volunteer
    • Campaigns
    • Writing Scheme
    • Partnership and Sponsorship
    • Advertise with Us
  • Donate
    • Become a Friend of PET
  • BioNews
    • News
    • Comment
    • Reviews
    • Elsewhere
    • Topics
    • Glossary
    • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
  • Engagement
    • Policy and Projects
      • Resources
    • Education
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • My Account
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements
PETBioNewsNewsStem cell treatment counters kidney rejection in early trial

BioNews

Stem cell treatment counters kidney rejection in early trial

Published 13 February 2013 posted in News and appears in BioNews 648

Author

Dr Rebecca Robey

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).

Stem cell therapy may remove the need for organ transplant recipients to have lifelong drug treatment to combat the risk of rejection, which would dramatically improve patients' quality of life...

Stem cell therapy may remove the need for organ transplant recipients to have lifelong drug treatment to combat the risk of rejection, which would dramatically improve patients' quality of life.

A new therapy technique has been trialled in eight US kidney transplant patients and early results have been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. One year after the transplant five of the patients managed to avoid taking the usual immunosuppressive medication and two patients were taking lower doses of these drugs than would normally be required. One patient developed viral sepsis — an occasional complication of organ transplantation — and had to have their new kidney removed again.

Dr Suzanne Ildstad, of the University of Louisville, who led the study, said: 'Immunosuppressive medications come with serious side effects with prolonged use including high blood pressure, diabetes, infection, heart disease and cancer, as well as direct damaging effects to the organ transplant. This new approach would potentially offer a better quality of life and fewer health risks for transplant recipients.'

The stem cell therapy effectively alters patients' immune systems, so that they do not recognise the transplanted kidneys as 'foreign' and reject them.

In the technique, the kidney donor is given medication to boost the number of bone marrow stem cells in their blood a month prior to the operation, and a blood donation is collected. The blood is processed to increase both the numbers of stem cells and another cell type the researchers called transplant 'facilitating cells', and frozen until needed.

The kidney recipient then undergoes radiation and chemotherapy to disable their own immune systems in a manner similar to treatment given to leukaemia patients prior to bone marrow transplants. The kidney is then transplanted and one day later the recipient receives a transplant of the stem cells and facilitating cells collected from the donor.

The transplant patient is then prescribed a usual regime of immunosuppressive drugs, but after six months is gradually weaned off them if the stem cell transplant has been successful.

Dr Tatsuo Kawai, a transplant surgeon at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study, wrote a commentary on the new approach in the same journal. He lauded the results, but also said that it was hard to tell from the study how important the facilitating cells were, as there had been no control group where patients underwent the procedure without receiving these cells.

He also added that subjecting transplant patients to a treatment as harsh as radio- and chemotherapy should be carefully considered, especially as the current techniques for kidney transplantation are relatively safe and well understood.

Related Articles

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).
News
19 March 2013 • 1 minute read

Liposuction fat used to create blood vessels

by Dr Greg Ball

Adult stem cells extracted from liposuctioned fat have been used to grow new blood vessels, according to scientists presenting their work at a conference. The researchers hope that one day their technique could be used in vascular surgery...

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).
News
14 March 2013 • 2 minutes read

'Outstanding' results in as-yet-unpublished arthritis stem cell trials

by Dr Greg Ball

Two UK newspapers have hailed a potential treatment for osteoarthritis using a patient's own stem cells although results from early studies in animals and patients are yet to be published...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
News
5 March 2013 • 1 minute read

Gene modification helps mouse mum tolerate fetus

by Dr Maria Teresa Esposito

Immune rejection, the body's defence mechanism, triggered in response to foreign tissues, is a huge problem for transplant operations. But why does a mother's immune system not reject the developing fetus? The answer may lie in modifications to genes that usually activate part of the immune response, according to scientists...

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).
News
28 February 2013 • 2 minutes read

Canadian regulators grant world's first approval for a stem cell drug

by Vicki Kay

The world's first stem cell drug has been approved by Canadian authorities. US biotech company, Osiris Therapeutics, has been given the go-ahead to market its drug, Prochymal, for the treatment of graft-versus-host-disease (GvHD) in children who fail to respond to steroids....

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).
News
25 January 2013 • 1 minute read

Human kidney tissue successfully grown from stem cells

by Michelle Downes

In what is thought to be a first, stem cells have been used to generate human kidney tissue...

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).
News
12 December 2012 • 2 minutes read

Stem cell therapy hope for kidney transplant patients

by George Frodsham

Scientists have found a new method of suppressing the automatic rejection of donated kidneys in transplant patients, by using the donor's stem cells. In a small trial carried out at Stanford University, California, eight out of 12 patients were able to stop taking anti-rejection drugs, which are usually a lifelong necessity, following this treatment....

Image by K Hardy via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human embryo at the blastocyst stage (about six days after fertilisation) 'hatching' out of the zona pellucida.
CC BY 4.0
Image by K Hardy via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human embryo at the blastocyst stage (about six days after fertilisation) 'hatching' out of the zona pellucida.
News
29 October 2012 • 1 minute read

Stem cells used to create 'fetal kidneys'

by Dr Rosie Morley

Scientists at Edinburgh University have grown kidney structures in the laboratory in a step they hope will lead to organs being grown for transplant patients from their own stem cells...

Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false colour).
CC BY 4.0
Image by Sílvia Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a single human stem cell embedded within a porous hydrogel matrix (false-coloured cryogenic scanning electron micrograph).
News
22 March 2010 • 1 minute read

Stem cells used for pioneering windpipe transplant

by Dr Vivienne Raper

A UK child has become the world's first to receive a full windpipe transplant using an organ built from his own stem cells...

PET BioNews
News
11 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

Pig stem cells offer renewed hope of GM organ transplants

by Heidi Colleran

A Chinese research team has brought the quest for a genetically modified pig, capable of providing viable organs for transplant patients, a step closer. Scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB) have succeeded in creating the first pig stem cells in the laboratory, the Journal of Molecular and Cell Biology reports. These cells could be used to create 'transgenic' pigs, which have been genetically altered so that their organs would not be rejected by the hum...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

« Smokers and obese people denied IVF by some NHS trusts

Data-Label The UK's Leading Supplier Of Medical Labels & Asset Labels

RetiringDentist.co.uk The UK's Leading M&A Company.

Find out how you can advertise here
easyfundraising
amazon

This month in BioNews

  • Popular
  • Recent
8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Placenta and organ formation observed in mouse embryo models

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Lower hormone doses may improve IVF egg quality

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Boosting muscle cell production of gene therapy proteins

1 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

First UK medical guidelines issued for trans fertility preservation

1 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Male age has more impact on IVF birth rate than previously thought

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Placenta and organ formation observed in mouse embryo models

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Complex structures of the human heart bioengineered

8 August 2022 • 1 minute read

Brain tumour gene also linked to childhood cancers

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Lower hormone doses may improve IVF egg quality

8 August 2022 • 2 minutes read

Boosting muscle cell production of gene therapy proteins

Subscribe to BioNews and other PET updates for free.

Subscribe
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Wellcome
Website redevelopment supported by Wellcome.

Website by Impact Media Impact Media

  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements

© 1992 - 2022 Progress Educational Trust. All rights reserved.

Limited company registered in England and Wales no 07405980 • Registered charity no 1139856

Subscribe to BioNews and other PET updates for free.

Subscribe
PET PET

PET is an independent charity that improves choices for people affected by infertility and genetic conditions.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Wellcome
Website redevelopment supported by Wellcome.

Navigation

  • About Us
  • Get Involved
  • Donate
  • BioNews
  • Events
  • Engagement
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us

BioNews

  • News
  • Comment
  • Reviews
  • Elsewhere
  • Topics
  • Glossary
  • Newsletters

Other

  • My Account
  • Subscribe

Website by Impact Media Impact Media

  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements

© 1992 - 2022 Progress Educational Trust. All rights reserved.

Limited company registered in England and Wales no 07405980 • Registered charity no 1139856