Kidney Transplants Without Immune Suppressive Drugs

A treatment for kidney transplant patients designed to induce a patient's acceptance of the transplanted organ without the long-term need for immunosuppressive drugs has shown the ability to improve survival.

The first transplant patient treated has been kept alive and free of cancer for almost four years without immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the kidney. The latest patient to be treated has remained alive for eight months following a transplant, is in remission, and is receiving low doses of cyclosporin to treat mild graft vs host disease (GHD). A third transplant patient has been in remission for 18 months without chronic immunosuppressive treatment. All the patients involved had needed transplants because of severe kidney damage resulting from a large intake of drugs for multiple myeloma. All were able to accept and retain the donor organ.

Patients receiving the treatment, called AlloMune System, receive bone marrow stem cells from the donor at the same time they receive the kidney transplant. The conditioning regimen for the bone marrow transplant is designed to leave part of the patient's immune system intact, decreasing the risk of infection. This procedure results in a hybrid-donor immune system that recognizes the transplanted kidney as one of the body's own organs.
The treatment was developed by BioTransplant (Charlestown, MA, USA).

A new trial is enrolling multiple myeloma patients with end-stage kidney disease using a prototype of BioTransplant's system. Another trial will enroll patients with no blood cancer who require kidney transplants. "Transplant survival without the need for chronic administration of immunosuppressive drugs is now becoming a clinical reality,” said Dr. Benedict Cosimi, chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Transplantation Unit (Boston, MA, USA), who will help to present the research findings at the American Transplant Congress in Washington, DC (USA).




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