ABOUT THE REGISTRY

The ultimate goal of the ITN Registry of Tolerant Kidney Transplant Recipients is to search for new ways to get kidney transplant patients off immunosuppressive therapies, for good. The investigators of this study believe that examining certain rare types of patients will result in important new clues regarding the immune system's rejection of transplanted organs and how we can prevent this without placing patients at risk of complications due to immunosuppresive drug therapy.

The ITN Registry will examine several groups of kidney patients who are very much out of the ordinary: patients who have, for some reason stopped taking all or most of their immunosuppressive medication, yet do not reject their transplants; and patietns who received their transplanted kidney from an identical twin. These groups of patients are exceptional cases in that they appear to have developed a natural "tolerance" to their transplanted kidney. In fact, these patients exhibit the properties of transplant tolerance that have been the major goal of researchers for decades and so there is much to learn from them.

The investigators of this study believe that within these unique patients are the answers to developing techniques that will allow other transplant recipients to forego immunosuppressive drug therapy.

How does it work?

The ITN Registry will consist strictly of patients who volunteer their participation in this study, up to 210 volunteers in total. Patients will be assessed for their eligibility in the study and for qualified volunteer, a short medical history and demographic survey will be compiled. Some volunteers, but not all, will then be asked to provide blood, urine and tissue samples. When possible, the investigators will also attempt to gather similar samples from some of the organ donors. The blood and tissue samples will be subject to a wide range of experimental procedures that measure various cellular and genetic properties of their immune system. The results of these experiments will be compared with "normal" individuals, such as those who are continuing to take immunosuppressive medication and those who have discontinued their immunosuppression but have rejected their transplant as a result.

In analyzing the results, the investigators will be looking to find:

• blood tests that may indicate that certain individuals may benefit from the withdrawal of immunosupressive therapy
• genetic factors that appear to contribute to the "natural tolerance" exhibited by some, very few patients
• differences in the tolerant patients' immune systems that are responsible for tolerance to the transplant

More information on the exact requirements for volunteers in this study is available here.