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Research

The pages below give an outline of the research being undertaken by the kidney units at Guys and St Thomas? NHS Foundation Trust and King?s College Hospital Foundation Trust.

Translating research into improving health and well being

Research at Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital

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A number of research projects are searching for more effective ways to match kidney donors and recipients.

The Clinical Transplantation Laboratory
(formerly known as Tissue Typing)

This is where blood and cells from a prospective organ donor and recipient are tested for compatibility before transplantation.

Research projects at the laboratory are led by Dr Bob Vaughan and include:
  • Improving the way in which patients are tissue-typed before transplantation.
  • Improving the detection of antibodies
    which can cause rejection after transplantation.
In future we hope that through projects like these, patients will receive better matched transplants that have less risk of rejection and will last longer.
 
Research at the Kidney Clinic

We have a fast growing clinical research programme in keeping with our aim to be at the forefront of treatment for kidney disease.

  •  Dr Heather Brown is studying ways to improve the care of kidney patients who are approaching the last year of their life (The ARC Project).
  •  Dr Paramit Chowdhury is the local contact for a national study to reduce the need for drugs like ciclosporin and tacrolimus to prevent transplant rejection (The 3C Study).
  •  In collaboration with Dr Macdougall at King’s College Hospital, Dr Chowdhury is the local contact for two studies looking at the effects of weight loss surgery in patients with chronic kidney disease and those already on haemodialysis.
  • Professor Tony Dorling and Dr Rachel Hilton are looking at new ways to treat chronic rejection in transplant patients (The RituxiCAN-C4 study). The aim is to stabilise kidney function in those patients and make their transplants last longer.
  •  Mr Martin Drage, Professor Sacks and Richard Smith are looking at a new treatment for donated kidneys before transplantation in order to help them to work better and protect them from rejection (The EMPIRIKAL study). 
  •  Dr David Goldsmith is studying arterial stiffness in patients on dialysis and after transplantation.
  •  Dr Goldsmith is also looking at the effects of vitamin D supplements in patients with kidney disease.
  •  Mr Nizam Mamode is leading the antibody-removal transplant programme at Guy’s. Patients who have antibodies against their kidney donors can have these antibodies removed before transplantation. Some of his research focuses on assessing the outcomes of these treatments to make sure that they are safe and effective.
  •  Mr Mamode is also leading a multi-centre study to test a new treatment to reduce the need for steroids to prevent transplant rejection (The REMIND study).
  •  Mr Jonathan Olsburgh is exploring the reasons why transplant patients develop urinary tract infections in order to develop better ways of preventing and treating such infections.
  •  Mr Olsburgh is also leading a study looking at whether it is safe to remove ureteric stents earlier following a transplant, thus avoiding an extra operation. (The TRUST study)
  •  Mr Olsburgh is also looking at ways of pre-conditioning kidney donors and recipients during surgery but before kidney removal which might improve kidney function after transplantation (The REPAIR study).
     

The MRC centre for Transplantation

  • Professor Graham Lord and his team are investigating the genes and proteins that are responsible for transplant rejection, heart disease and side-effects of immunosuppressive drugs in order to help design treatments to improve clinical care and survival of transplant patients.
  • Professor Steve Sacks and his team together with Dr Paramit Chowdhury are investigating a number of genetic biomarkers that can predict the chance of developing rejection. This study should also allow more precise tailoring of immunosuppressive drug doses following transplantation and reduce the risks of under or over immunosuppressing individual patients (KALIBRE).
  • Professor Anthony Dorling has joined the research team from Imperial College. He has a long-standing interest in the role that antibodies play in transplant rejection and is looking at new ways to help understand when antibodies are harmful and when they may be helpful after transplantation.
  • Dr Maria Hernandez-Fuentes together with Dr Hilton are studying ways to detect whether patients have become tolerant to their transplant over time to see if we can successfully reduce immunosuppressive drugs in selected patients (GAMBIT).
  • Dr Michael Robson is studying mechanisms of kidney injury in inflammatory kidney diseases.

Updated June 2011