Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The Problem: After kidney transplantation, patients must take lifelong medications to prevent their immune system from rejecting the donated organ. Finding the right dose is challenging-too little causes rejection, too much leads to infections and cancer. Currently, doctors adjust these medications by trial and error, leading to complications and shorter transplant survival. Our Solution: We're developing a personalized test that measures how strongly a patient's immune system attacks their transplanted kidney. This will help doctors prescribe the exact medication dose needed to protect the kidney without causing harmful side effects. How It Works: The test combines immune cells from the patient's blood with kidney cells from their donor. The challenge is obtaining donor kidney cells, which normally requires a painful biopsy. Instead, we use cells naturally found in urine and reprogram them into pluripotent stem cells-cells that can grow into any tissue. We then grow these into kidney organoids (mini-kidneys) that act as safe, repeatable stand-ins for the donated organ. Expected Benefits: This personalized test could eliminate guesswork in transplant medication, reduce the need for painful biopsies, help transplanted kidneys last longer, and improve quality of life for transplant recipients. It would also make better use of Canada's limited donor kidney supply. Patient Involvement: We're partnering with kidney transplant patients to collect urine samples and gather their perspectives on this technology, ensuring our research remains directly relevant to their needs.