Researchers: Sarah Hosgood, Rachel Brown
Creative: Jess Nash
Our research aims to increase the number and quality of donor kidneys available for transplantation. Donor kidneys are currently stored on ice until they are transplanted, which is similar to keeping food fresh in the fridge. Although kidneys can be stored safely at low temperature, prolonged cold storage damages kidneys in the same way that food eventually perishes in the fridge. We have developed a new technique to preserve transplant kidneys called normothermic machine perfusion (NMP).
During NMP, the kidney is connected to a machine that pumps a warm oxygen-rich blood solution through the organ for about an hour. This mimics the conditions in the body – the warmed kidney starts to function again and produce urine.
NMP has a number of beneficial effects:
• it revives the kidney and repairs much of the damage caused by cold storage • it allows surgeons to check the viability of the kidney, which reduces the number that are discarded because of doubts about their potential to work well • it allows therapies and drugs to be given directly to the kidney on the NMP machine, avoiding the need to treat the donor or recipient
This technique has already been used successfully in clinical practice and is the subject of a large multicentre trial (www.evnp.org.uk).
To find out more about the research and the creative:
Twitter: @BTRU_ODT
instagram: @jess__nash
www.jessnash.co.uk
