Penn Medicine https://www.pennmedicine.org received a seven year $14 million grant from NIH to promote organ transplantation for patients with end-stage renal disease who are on the waitlist for a kidney transplant.
Currently, 97,000 patients are on the waiting list for a kidney transplants in the U.S. A major barrier to successful transplantation in some of these patients is the existence of pre-formed antibodies against potential organ donors.
The team will launch a clinical trial harnessing synthetic chimeric antigen receptor T cells. This was developed at Penn Medicine for use in patients when a compatible kidney can’t be found due to pre-existing antibodies against potential donors. This arises when patients are exposed to other people’s cells or tissues such a through pregnancy, blood transfusion, or previous organ transplants.
The NIH funded clinical trial will leverage CAR T cells, a form of immunotherapy that has proven remarkably effective as an anti-cancer treatment. Two experimental CAR T cell therapies developed at Penn will be used to deplete immune B cells and plasma cells that make donor specific antibodies with the hope of achieving a compatible kidney match.
The trial intends to begin enrolling patients by the end of 2022, will be offered at three sites, led by Penn and will include Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard University and New York University, Langone Health.
“Engineering novel cellular immunotherapies to help improve access to kidney transplants is an exciting area of research for a unique patient population in great need of lifesaving organs”, said Ali Naji, MD, PhD, the J. William White Professor of Surgical Research at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Penn and PI for the study.