Implementation of a living-related organ donation program in clinical lung transplantation: role of psychological, physiologic and immunologic parameters

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Strüber
• Subject Area: Cardiac and Vascular Surgery
• Term: from 2007 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5397299

Living donor lung transplantation could alleviate the donor organ shortage, could provide improved HLA-matching and could enable pretreatment protocols aimed at the deliberate induction of transplantation tolerance. The aim of the herein described project is to evaluate psychological, physiologic and immunologic parameters in young patients undergoing livingrelated lung transplantation in a newly implemented clinical program. Control patients will be age-matched recipients of cadaver lungs. Psychological parameters to be evaluated longitudinally will comprise perception of health-related quality of life, signs and symptoms of anxiety and depression, and interpersonal and familial coping strategies. Physiologic parameters include routine lung function tests (VCmax, FEV1), analyses of exhaled nitric oxide, blood gas analyses (arterial and/or capillary), chest radiographs, bronchoscopies with bronchoalveolar Javages and ergospirometry tests. Immunologic parameters will be evaluated in an attempt to characterize T cell-mediated mechanisms of alloantigen-regulation. This includes FACS-assays and slide based cytometry for phenotype analyses of leukocyte population, and mixed lymphocyte reaction assays for functional analyses of T cell regulation. We hypothesize that living donor lung transplantation will lead to improvements of multiple of the aforementioned parameters as compared to control recipients of cadaver lungs. In conclusion, the implementation of a living donor lung transplantation program will make this procedure available in the Eurotransplant zone for the first time, opening exciting prospects for the scientific monitoring of the program described in this project.

• DFG Programme: Clinical Research Units
• Subproject of: KFO 123: Lung Transplantation
• Participating Persons: Professorin Dr. Gesine Hansen; Professorin Dr. Christiane Kugler