Scientists at King's College London have developed a method capable of prolonging the life out of body organs for transplantation.
In collaboration with the biotechnology industry, British scientists have developed a method which is applied to the inner surface of the kidneys from a donor with a protective layer made of a substance which is a natural regulator of certain proteins.
It is a protein called mirococept reproducing the protective mechanism is activated in response to attacks by the immune system, which could boost the survival time of organs outside the human body.
Normally, the organs do not survive once extracted from a larger body of about twenty-four hours, which represents a serious problem for transplant.
When an infection or a virus attack cells or body fluids is activated the immune system that attacks and attempts to destroy the body's cells intruder, but that system is controlled in turn by "regulatory" proteins-molecules-present the cell surface.
These proteins inhibit the body's own cells are also attacked by the immune system.
But when an organ is removed for transplant, those regulators disappear due to lack of blood flow and consequently to the absence of oxygen.
This effect is countered by the material developed by scientists at King's College and presented today at a conference in Birmingham.
In the first experiments half of the organs treated with mirococept survived the ice storage for sixteen hours, while only a fifth of untreated organs.
A pilot study involving thirteen patients showed that the method is safe and now tries to recruit more than three hundred volunteers for a more comprehensive test will be held next year in several transplant centers in the UK.
Patients who were treated with implanted organs mirococept will, however, having to take drugs to silence their immune systems and is now trying to reduce the dose needed to achieve because these drugs increase the risk of cancer.
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