VANCOUVER - Researchers in British Columbia have set their sights on virtually eliminating organ rejection by using advanced genetic testing to better match patients with kidney donors. Dr. Paul Keown, lead researcher for the pilot project and a University of British Columbia specialist in immunology and transplantation, said the new technology involves genetic sequencing at the molecular level to significantly reduce the risk of a recipient’s immune system rejecting a donor kidney.
“We hope to see rejection almost disappear,” he said of the project,partly funded by Genome British Columbia and Genome Canada through a partnership with Canadian Blood Services. About half of all transplants fail over time due to rejection, Keown said. Currently, patients awaiting a transplant are tested for the same blood type with a potential donor.
They are also tested to determine if they have antibodies — from pregnancy, a blood transfusion or a previous transplant — that would cause their immune system to attack a donor kidney. It’s long been known that the immune system uses a set of molecules called HLA, or human leukocyte antigens, to distinguish between its own cells and those from a donor organ, leading to possible rejection. But matching donors and recipients is difficult because there are more than 30,000 variations of HLA molecules.
Dr. James Lan, a transplant nephrologist who is involved with the project, said the new methodcompares small sequences called epitopes, the .
