The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Piedmont is lead site for national transplant trial
Piedmont Transplant Institute, which is based at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, enrolled more patients in the potentially ground-breaking Pro-Act clinical trial than any other participating site in the United States, according to a press release.
The study (titled, “Prevention of De Novo HCV With Antiviral HCV Therapy Post-Liver and Post-Kidney Transplant”) has reached its enrollment targets, with Piedmont placing nine of the 24 patients in the study, according to Dr. Raymond Rubin, chief scientific officer and transplant hepatologist at Piedmont Transplant Institute.
Preliminary data from the study will be presented at the European Association for the Study of Liver Disease, which meets in London from April 15 to 19, and at the American Transplant Congress, which meets in Philadelphia in June. Piedmont Transplant Institute is the data-monitoring site for the study.
From July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2019, Piedmont transplanted 127 livers. Piedmont ranks in the top 10% of the country in abdominal organ transplant volumes and Piedmont Atlanta ranks among the nation’s busiest non-academic transplant hospitals.
For patients in need of a liver transplant who are officially on the wait list, nearly 1 in 5 die before an organ becomes available. For patients listed for a kidney transplant, the waiting times in Georgia average seven to nine years. The aims of the study are to show that receiving a HCV-positive organ is safe, the Hepatitis C can be cured, and patients receiving an organ from a HCV-positive donor wait a shorter length of time than they would have had to wait otherwise.
Piedmont Transplant Institute did the first liver transplant in the country as part of this study in July 2018. This patient has already completed his HCV treatment and has been cured of the virus. Piedmont did its first kidney transplant in the study in October 2018.