Revolutionary Coating for Blood Vessels Minimizes Rejection of Transplanted Organs
Scientists have recently found a route to decrease organ rejection after a transplant by utilizing a unique polymer to cover blood vessels on the organ that will be transplanted.
SFU and Northwestern University tests show that the polymer produced by UBC medicine professor Dr. Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu and his colleagues at the Centre for Blood Research and Life Sciences Institute significantly reduced rejection of transplants in animals.
Dr. Kizhakkedathu pointed out that he and his team are enthusiastic that this innovation will someday improve the quality of life for transplant patients and increase the life expectancy of transplanted organs. The findings were released on August 9, 2021, in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
The finding could eliminate the requirement for medication– typically with serious side effects– on which transplant recipients count to stop their immune systems from attacking a new organ as a strange body. Dr. Kizhakkedathu described how problems develop, explaining that blood vessels in our organs are safeguarded with a layer of unique kinds of sugars that reduce the immune system’s response. However, in the process of procuring organs for transplantation, these sugars are harmed and unable to transfer their message.
Dr. Kizhakkedathu’s team was able to synthesize a polymer to mimic these sugars and created a chemical method for applying it to blood vessels; he worked with UBC chemistry professor Dr. Stephen Withers and the research’s co-lead authors, Ph.D. candidate Daniel Luo, as well as recent chemistry Ph.D. Dr. Erika Siren.
Dr. Siren’s reasoning on cell-surface engineering had been inspired by a visit to a BC Transplant center. Dr. Siren recalled a time while seeing an organ in a solution and thinking to himself: “Here is a perfect window to engineer something right.” Dr. Siren continues by saying that there are few situations where someone has this wonderful four-hour opportunity where the organ is outside the body. You can directly engineer it for healing benefits.
The work of Simon Fraser University’s Dr. Jonathan Choy and Winnie Enns verified that a mouse artery, covered this way and afterward transplanted, would certainly display solid, long-term resistance to swelling and rejection. Dr. Caigan Du of UBC and Dr. Jenny Zhang of Northwestern University afterward got comparable results from a kidney transplant in between mice. Dr. Megan Levings of UBC and the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute consolidated the findings through new-generation immune cells.
Dr. Choy, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at SFU., says that he and his team were impressed by the capacity of this brand-new technology to prevent rejection in the studies the team conducted. Dr. Choy continues by saying that the level of protection was unexpected.
Until now, the procedure has recently been applied just to blood vessels and kidneys in mice. Clinical tests in humans could still be many years away. Still, the researchers are positive it might function just as well on lungs, hearts, and various other organs, which would certainly be fantastic news for possible receivers of donated organs. In 2019, over 3,000 Canadians undertook organ transplantation intending to avoid end-stage organ failure.
Originally published on Scitechdaily.com. Read the original article.
Reference: “Prevention of vascular-allograft rejection by protecting the endothelial glycocalyx with immunosuppressive polymers” by Erika M. J. Siren, Haiming D. Luo, Franklin Tam, Ashani Montgomery, Winnie Enns, Haisle Moon, Lyann Sim, Kevin Rey, Qiunong Guan, Jiao-Jing Wang, Christine M. Wardell, Mahdis Monajemi, Majid Mojibian, Megan K. Levings, Zheng J. Zhang, Caigan Du, Stephen G. Withers, Jonathan C. Choy and Jayachandran N. Kizhakkedathu, 9 August 2021, Nature Biomedical Engineering.
DOI: 10.1038/s41551-021-00777-y
