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The field of organ transplantation has witnessed significant strides in recent years, offering renewed hope for individuals suffering from organ failure. These advancements address two key challenges: the limited availability of donor organs and the long-term health of transplant recipients. The transplantation of genetically modified porcine organs into brain-dead or severely ill patients, the improvement of organ perfusion and transplantation techniques, the evolution of strategies to achieve longer organ preservation and expansion of donor pools, the advancement of precision immunosuppression approaches, and the development of new automated diagnostic tools for allograft rejection as well as of new predictive and prognostic models, is marking a period of exciting transformation.
This cross-journal Collection welcomes submissions of original research studies focused on addressing unmet needs in organ transplantation. This includes studies focused on new transplantation and xenotransplantation approaches, on strategies aiming at improved organ preservation and expanded availability, and on predicting, monitoring, or ameliorating the health of transplant recipients. We are open to receiving translational and preclinical studies, observational clinical studies, interventional clinical trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, biomarker and diagnostic accuracy studies.
In addition to original research, we are open to receiving Reviews, Perspectives, and Comments that offer significant insights into the topic.
Despite being recommended, day-zero biopsies are often not performed, due to the cost and time. Here, the authors show that machine learning and donor’s basic parameters can predict the biopsy, offering a reliable virtual estimation of the day-zero biopsy findings.
Ex vivo perfusion is a unique platform to study isolated human lungs. Here, authors show that a machine learning model, InsighTx, derived from data generated during ex vivo lung perfusion can accurately predict transplant outcomes and increase organ utilization rates.
Long-term machine perfusion of human livers outside the body is an emerging field with tremendous potential for the assessment, recovery, and modification of organs prior to transplantation. Here, the authors report the long-term ex situ perfusion of human livers and demonstrate the ability to split and perfuse these organs using a standardised protocol.
The possibility of banking cryopreserved organs could make transplantation medicine much more accessible. Here, the authors show that vitrification and nanowarming—cooling organs to an ice-free state followed by rapid rewarming using nanoparticles and magnetic fields—enables organ cryopreservation, long-term banking, and recovery of full function in a rat kidney transplant model.
Acute graft versus host disease is a rare but deadly complication following liver transplantation. Author show here, upon screening a large cohort of liver transplanted patients and detailed immune phenotyping of samples from the 7 affected individuals and appropriate controls, that human T cell lymphotropic virus type I infection of donor immune cells appear to correlate with the occurrence of acute graft versus host disease.
In this study, authors use combinatory bacteriophage-antibiotic therapy, as treatment for extensively drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection in a toddler post liver transplantation. They report on the clinical and microbiological improvement, and present their investigation on how bacterial phage resistance did not result in therapeutic failure.
Lung transplantation is hindered by the scarcity of organs and by mortality following primary graft dysfunction. Here, the authors show that cytokine absorption can be used in donor lungs during ex vivo lung perfusion and post-transplant, and leads to restored lung function and reduced primary graft dysfunction in animal models.
Divard, Raynaud et al. compare artificial intelligence (AI)-based predictions of kidney allograft failure based on electronic health records with those made by transplant physicians of varying levels of experience. The ability of physicians to predict allograft failure is limited, with superior performance seen for the AI system.
Minor et al. present and evaluate a quantitative approach to measuring metabolic turnover of 13C-acetate during isolated perfusion to ascertain the quality of porcine donor kidneys. This approach effectively discriminates varying degrees of organ graft quality, where conventional renal function tests are ineffective.