6 US Teams Awarded for Research in Organ Xplant

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Six US Teams Awarded Grants for Research in Organ Transplantation



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NEW YORK (MedWire) Nov 28 - The Roche Organ Transplantation Research Foundation (ROTRF) recently named 10 research teams, including 6 US groups, as the winners of its sixth grant awards competition. The grants, totaling approximately $1 million, will support research teams in their work to advance the science of solid organ transplantation.



The teams were selected after a review of 103 "letters of intent" submitted by a variety of international research teams to the ROTRF Web site (http://www.rotrf.org). Researchers from North America accounted for 54% of the total applicants, researchers from Europe for 35%, and the remaining 11% came from Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. The Scientific Advisory Committee ranked the letters of intent according to originality and scientific quality, and then invited the top 21 teams to present full paper submissions, of which 10 were awarded full or partial funding.



"The Trustees congratulate Roche for taking the bold and creative step of establishing ROTRF as a charity with a broad mandate in research," said Philip Halloran, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Alberta and Chairman of the Foundation's Board of Trustees. "The Trustees hope that the funds available through the Foundation will permit transplantation researchers to develop new technologies and areas of interest, and will encourage researchers in other areas to study transplantation problems.



The research grants were awarded to the following US teams in the described topic areas:





Dr. Christiane Ferran, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts. "rotective effect of A20 against transplant-associated vasculopathy"



Dr. David Gerber, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. "The immunologic basis of hepatic progenitor cell transplantation"



Dr. Michael Gunn, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC. "The role of plasmacytoid dendritic cells in the development of tolerance"



Dr. Anatolij Horuzsko, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia. "revention of skin allograft rejection by HLA-G-modified dendritic cells"



Dr. Koichi Shimizu, Brigham & Woman's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. "Source of intimal smooth muscle like cells in aortic allograft arteriopathy"



Dr. William Burlingham, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Wisconsin, USA (pending approval) "Delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) status and MMF monotherapy"



Grant recipients must be established members of academic staff at universities, transplant centers, or research institutes. The goal of their research must be to improve the outcome of organ transplantation. Recipients' research findings are published in the ROTRF annual report.



An example of research the funding has supported includes: long-term survival of transplanted organs, prevention of chronic transplant organ dysfunction, development of new agents for use in transplantation, and the induction of tolerance.



The Roche Group is providing ROTRF with approximately 25 million Swiss Francs ($16.6 million) in funding for its first 5 years. ROTRF is a nonprofit, independent and autonomous registered medical charity dedicated to advancing organ transplantation by supporting research with operating grants.



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