Funding from the Alberta Transplant Innovation Fund will help improve the lives of those waiting for an organ transplant. Pictured: Jim Brown, Deron Bilous, Lori West, Puneeta Tandon, Mike Bentley and Ronald Moore. Photo supplied by the University Hospital Foundation.
New funding from the Alberta Transplant Innovation Fund (ATIF) will help four Alberta transplant research teams advance transplant medicine, improving the the lives of the hundreds of Albertans waiting for an organ transplant.
One of the recipients of the second round of ATIF funding is Puneeta Tandon, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry's Department of Medicine. Tandon is developing a personalized, online program to improve health outcomes for patients awaiting liver transplantation.
"We know that physical frailty is one of the most important contributors to morbidity and mortality in our patients, and proper nutrition and exercise are essential to maintain health while patients are waiting to receive a life-saving transplant," said Tandon. "Many patients don't live close enough to a large center to be able to receive specialized, structured programming. Building off work we have already done, through this research I am working with a team of patients, dietitians and exercise specialists to design exercise videos tailored to patients who are waiting for a liver transplant"
According to Tandon, the program will be personalized and allow for ongoing interaction with a dietitian and exercise specialist team, to keep up motivation.
"We need to give all of our patients the tools they need so they are healthy enough to accept a transplant," said Tandon.
The projects receiving ATIF funding are:
Puneeta Tandon: A personalized online pre-habilitation program to improve health outcomes in patients awaiting liver transplantation
Benjamin Adam: The molecular phenotype of polyomarivus nephropathy and its distinction from T-cell mediated rejection
Steven Greenway: Mechanism of Microbiome-Mediated Gastrointestinal Toxicity of Mycophenolate Mofetil
Aldo Montano-Loza: A prospective, longitudinal evaluation of skeletal muscle for prognosis of patients with cirrhosis evaluated for liver transplantation
Accelerating transplant innovation
The $1.2 million ATIF was established by the University Hospital Foundation and Alberta Economic Development and Trade in 2016 to fund research aimed at improving the care available to transplant patients, and accelerating the translation of this research into technology that is commercially viable, and therefore available to clinicians and patients.
"The University Hospital Foundation has proudly supported the University of Alberta Hospital's transplant program for five decades; investing more than $6 million to advance transplant patient care, research and technology," says Jim Brown, chair of the University Hospital Foundation. "The Alberta Transplant Innovation Fund further develops that support―as is evident in the tremendous research that will be funded through this partnership with Astellas and Alberta Economic Development and Trade."
Tandon's work was ranked number one in the Canadian National Transplant Research Program's (CNTRP) 2017 Research Innovation Grant competition, through which the ATIF grants were reviewed. ATIF invested an additional $120,000 in the CNTRP grant competition to increase the investment in transplant focused research based in Alberta.
Four out of the five top-ranked research projects were from Alberta researchers, highlighting the provinces expertise in the area. The Center for World University Rankings recently placed the U of A's transplant program as sixth in the world. The rising international profile of UAlberta's transplant program is propelled by the robust research programs run through the Alberta Transplant Institute (ATI) and the CNTRP―both housed at U of A.
"As part of the national structure of the CNTRP, these five Alberta projects are now linked with patients and investigators from across disciplines and centres that will help increase and strengthen the impact of their research," said Lori West, scientific director of the CNTRP, director of the ATI and professor in the Department of Pediatrics.
"Alberta provides significant leadership in the field of donation and transplant research and we have had tremendous success uniting expertise across the country to increase access to donation and improve outcomes for patients living with a transplant," she said.