Transplant patients currently face a lifetime of immune-suppressing drugs to stop their bodies rejecting donated organs. A new MRC Centre at King’s College London aims to change that by bringing together biologists and transplant surgeons to find ways of making replacement tissues acceptable without lifelong medication. The problem is twofold. First, there are not enough donated organs to meet demand for conditions such as kidney and liver failure, arthritis, diabetes, and tooth loss. Second, even when a transplant succeeds, the drugs needed to block the immune system cause serious side effects and leave patients vulnerable to infection. The Centre will explore supplementary sources of donor tissues—including stem cells—and develop new diagnostic and treatment approaches that could reduce or eliminate the need for immune suppression. If successful, this research could transform transplantation from a last-resort treatment into a more widely available therapy. Patients might receive replacement tissues without the burden of lifelong drugs, and more conditions could become treatable. The Centre will also train the next generation of researchers and work with legal and ethics experts to ensure new approaches are responsibly implemented.
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Replacement of diseased organs and cells by healthy tissue is a dream that has partly been realised through progress in transplantation over the last 50 years. However, for transplantation therapy to achieve greater success and on a wider scale, advance is needed in several directions. These include finding supplementary sources of donor tissues and cells that lend themselves for therapy of a larger number of conditions, such as kidney and liver failure, arthritis, diabetes and tooth loss; and a way of ensuring acceptance of the replacement tissue without the need for lifelong drugs that block the immune system. To accelerate progress, experts in basic biology and transplant medicine at King s College London plan to come together in a joint venture with the Medical Research Council, to form the UK s first MRC Centre for Translation of Research in Transplantation. The Centre s mission is to put research in transplantation on a new trajectory to deliver more rapid and effective modes of diagnosis and treatment. The programme of research will apply extensive knowledge of human immunology, stem cell biology, genomics and imaging to develop new areas that will benefit human health. In collaboration with the King s College Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, the MRC Centre will also play a pivotal role in training and education.
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