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Hannover-based researchers seek to create ‘invisible’ organs

The recipient of a donor organ has embarked on a new chapter in their life with, say, a new, healty heart or liver. But they also live with the risk that their body will reject the transplanted organ. For example, this happens within the first five years to a quarter of those who have kidney transplants – despite being on medication to suppress the immune system. A team of scientists led by Professor Rainer Blasczyk of the Institute for Transfusion Medicine (ITM) at Hannover Medical School (MHH) now want to use a completely new strategy to prevent organ rejection and, more than this, to obviate the need for immunosuppression, which often has serious side effects such as infections or tumours. To this end, they are genetically modifying the donated organs so that the recipient’s immune system does not detect them and hence does not reject them. MHH has teamed up with Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Professor Jens Hofschulte) and Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH; Dr Jan Zeidler) to form a research alliance that will be funded for three years by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) to the tune of more than 1.2m euros. These funds are sourced from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and federal-state resources.

Professor Rainer Blasczyk and Dr Constanca Sofia Ferreira de Figueiredo of the
REBIRTH unit on Tolerogenic Cell Therapy.

The immune system recognizes a ‘foreign’, transplanted organ by its characteristic tissue markers. The researchers are now aiming to remove these cell structures by means of genetic engineering. Not only are they devising a technique to achieve this, they are also developing a special organ preservation system that allows ex vivo organ modification. After this, the organ is ready to be transplanted into the recipient, whose immune system is no longer able to recognize its origin – it is effectively invisible.

The researchers on this project are using pig kidneys and a minipig animal model to conduct these experiments, preparatory to a follow-up study in humans planned to start in 2021. The intention is to then apply the technique in patients, at an MHH facility called the Organ Care Centre Hannover which will have been built by then – and not only for the kidney but also for other organs such as the lung, heart and liver.

As part of the current collaborative research project, the Institute for Risk and Isurance (IBVL) is also considering wider economic aspects, this being important in terms of whether health insurers may meet the costs at some point in the future. The researchers are also analysing whether this new technique is suitable for use with already immunized patients.

NEWSLETTER 2018 | 2