CSI Clinical Science Investigations: Where Science Meets the Bedside

ROTRF Luncheon Satellite Symposium
Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre (Room # 717 A/B), Toronto, Canada
Saturday, May 31, 2008, 12:15 – 13:30

Moderators:
Prof. Philip F. Halloran
(Chairman of the ROTRF Board of Trustees, University of Alberta, Edmonton Canada)
Dr Peter Wijngaard
(ROTRF Trustee, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Basel, Switzerland)

12:15 Introduction
Peter Wijngaard
12:20 How biomarkers "see" a population of stable long-term kidney recipients: A basis for immunosuppressive weaning
Jean-Paul Soulillou, University of Nantes, Nantes, France
12:35 Pathogenesis and treatment of chronic antibody-mediated rejection: A case analysis
Robert B. Colvin, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
12:50 Cytomegalovirus disease in solid organ transplantation
J. Andrew Bradley, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
13:05 Closing Remarks
Philip F. Halloran

Symposium Programme [40 KB] PDF


The Roche Organ Transplantation Research Foundation (ROTRF) was created in 1998 to enhance understanding and to improve outcomes in clinical organ transplantation. The ROTRF defines its priorities as supporting clinical and basic research that will impact on clinical organ transplantation. Recent developments have created unprecedented opportunities to understand events in clinical transplantation in molecular terms and to use this knowledge for new interventions. Emerging technologies provide an opportunity to address molecular mechanisms of disease in the human setting, studying patients. In many cases, this will create new insights that will challenge our current understanding, and guide the development of more relevant models that better simulate the disease states in human organ transplantation. This will also create new diagnostic tools for early detection of rejection, infection and injury, and new therapeutic interventions to target these mechanisms.

This session aims to demonstrate how new knowledge can open opportunities to understand, predict, and manage patients receiving organ transplants. The key concept is that disease states in transplants can now be studied in terms of biological mechanisms, opening up the possibility of more rational and effective targeted interventions.

The first presentation will explore whether and how new technologies may be utilised to allow identification of low-risk patients in whom weaning of immunosuppression may be safe and beneficial. Chronic antibody-mediated rejection, potential mechanisms of action of rituximab, and new therapeutic approaches to the inhibition of antibody responses will be the topics of the second talk. Finally, the complexity of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, prevention, diagnosis and management of CMV, as well as current developments in the area will be explored in the third presentation.