Transplantation
The transplant programs at Stanford Hospital & Clinics have earned a number of distinctions including outstanding outcomes for both patient and graft survival. It is made up of a community of nephrologists, surgeons, pathologists, and immunologists who are applying creative research to clinical problems in pursuit of ways to improve patient care.
The Stanford Transplantation Program is a patient-focused, global leader in cohesive bench-to-bedside research that advances transplantation. With a focus on immunity our teams seeks to optimize the gift of transplantation by increasing the number of patients undergoing a transplant and improve the quality of life before and after transplantation.
"Liver transplantation has come a long way over the years and there are plenty of opportunities at Stanford to advance the field," says Carlos Esquivel, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Transplantation, director of Stanford's Liver Transplant Program, and the Arnold and Barbara Silverman Professor in Pediatric Transplantation. "Our next steps involve using donor stem cells to induce tolerance, creating an artificial liver as an external back-up system, and developing better mechanisms for preserving the organ."
The various research projects focused on the immune system conducted at the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection (ITI) help make these goals come true:
- Tolerance Immunity: personalized immunosuppression; elimination of life-long immunosuppressant drugs; elimination of recurring infections and malignancies; predictors of rejection and tolerance; desensitization (Sam Strober)
- Organ Generation and Regeneration (David Miklos): artificial organs; organ generation and regeneration
- Detection of organ status
- Prevention of organ failure
- Predictors of rejection and tolerance
- Predictors of infection/malignancy
- Desensitization