Kidney recipients sought for trial at UW Health
Researchers at University of Wisconsin Health announced this week they will begin recruiting a small number of kidney transplant recipients for a new trial that will use specially designed white blood cells to treat a complication called severe cytomegalovirus infection.
The trial, which has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, will enroll 20 adult kidney transplant recipients with the complication, probably starting in November, said Arjang Djamali, the trial’s lead researcher and a UW professor of medicine and surgery.
Djamali, who is also nephrology division chief at UW Health, said white blood cells will be extracted from a patient’s parent or sibling. Those cells will then be manipulated to make them effective at attacking and destroying cytomegalovirus infection.
In healthy people with stable immune systems, the virus may cause fever, sore throat and swollen glands. But after a kidney transplant, the patient’s immune system is held back to prevent rejection of the organ.
“The use of living cells collected from relatives with intact immunity to cure viral complications of transplantation is an entirely new therapy for a vexing problem,” said Jacques Galipeau, who directs UW’s Program for Advanced Cell Therapy.
Patients for the trial are being selected at UW Health, the sole location for the trial at present. They can be referred by their doctor or can refer themselves for inclusion in the trial as long as they can be treated at UW Health.
Cytomegalovirus infection afflicts between 30% and 40% of kidney transplant recipients. In 2018, nearly 20,000 Americans received kidney transplants.
UW Health performs about 320 kidney or combined kidney-pancreas transplants each year, accounting for the majority of those done in the state.
UW Health, affiliated with the university’s School of Medicine and Public Health, has more than 1,350 doctors and serves more than 600,000 patients a year at UW hospitals and clinics.