Outgoing transplant society president says organ supply, outcomes remain challenges
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Key takeaways:
- The organ shortage and improving long-term outcomes are two challenges facing the transplant community.
- Collaboration is key for surgical and scientific innovation to succeed.
Despite advances in the last 7 decades, some challenges remain for transplantation, including a limited organ supply and improving long-term outcomes, the outgoing president of the American Society of Transplantation said in a presentation.
“Two decades ago, I attended my first [American Transplant Congress] ATC meeting and fell in love with transplantation,” Deepali Kumar, MD, MSc, FRCP(C), a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and director of transplant infectious diseases at the University Health Network, told attendees at the ATC in San Diego. “To me, there were two reasons: it was exciting to take an organ from one human being and put it into another and save a life – it felt like science fiction,” she said. “The second was the people – the enthusiasm and the feeling of accomplishing something fantastic and incredible.”
Kumar said transplantation has become successful in saving lives, “but with that success we have created some challenges.
“We face two large issues today. One is the shortage of organs, including the issues of access, allocation and equity,” she said. “The second is the need to improve long-term outcomes, including reducing rejections, infections and increasing graft survival.”
As president of the society, Kumar has led the organization in increasing membership to more than 4,300 members and helped to develop 16 communities of practice that include women’s health, pediatric transplantation, infectious disease and living donors. She has also worked with William Chapman, MD, president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, in lobbying the NIH to create a new section for transplantation and “developing a framework for moving xenotransplantation forward,” Kumar said.
Collaboration between surgical and scientific innovation is critical to advancing the specialty of transplantation “or we will not succeed,” Kumar said. “Surgical innovations are important, but don’t make transplant success on their own,” she said. “Both the surgical innovation and the scientific innovation need to go hand in hand for us to succeed.”
She said use of artificial intelligence is part of the future of the specialty, with potential to improve organ allocation and help clinicians develop more effective prescriptions for immunosuppressive drugs.
Kumar led the development of the AST’s strategic plan, which will help direct the society during the next several years.
“The future of transplantation is exciting,” Kumar said. “As health care providers, we have to be ready to go outside our comfort zone and embrace change. There will be new areas of technology including gene editing, stem cells for organ repair, new therapeutic and mechanical devices and, of course, xenotransplantation.
“We, as transplant professionals, have a unique opportunity at the center of this paradigm shift, but only if we are nimble and embrace change,” Kumar said.
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