NIH awards UCLA $8.4 million to help liver transplant recipients

University of California, Los Angeles received an $8.4 million, five-year grant from the NIH to help develop medications to prevent the body from rejecting a transplanted liver and help patients stay healthier longer, according to a press release.

With this new grant, the fourth in a series from the NIH to the Dumont-UCLA Transplant Center, total funding provided is now more than $13 million, per the release.

Led by Jerzy Kupiec-Weglinski, MD, PhD, Paul I. Terasaki chair in surgery and vice chair of research in the department of surgery at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, the project aims to help patients who undergo liver transplants years after surgery, according to the press release.

“There are less than 10 program project grants in the country funded by the NIH that are related to organ transplantation, so this is a big deal,” Kupiec-Weglinski said in the release. “Through this project, we believe we will develop novel therapeutic strategies that can be directly applied in transplant patients.”

According to the release, about 90% of liver transplant recipients at UCLA live at least one year after surgery, indicating the procedure was successful. However, transplanted livers only remain viable for approximately 15 years, which means recipients must again wait for a new organ.

“The long-term outcomes are not so great for many recipients, regardless of where they receive their transplant. Graft rejection and a lack of donor organs continue to be major problems for organ recipients,” Kupiec-Weglinski added. “This project addresses two of the major problems in transplantation worldwide: the decreasing quality of donor organs and a widening disparity between the increasing numbers of potential transplant recipients and inadequate donor organ supply.”

Reference: www.ucla.edu