Research Group

  • Dr Agustín Lahoz, Principal Investigator
  • Juan Carlos, García-Cañaveras, Collaborator
  • Dr Castell José V., Co-applicant
  • Dr Pareja Eugenia, Co-applicant
  • Dr Mir José, Co-Applicant
  • Dr Sánchez-Turrión Víctor, Co-Applicant
  • Dr Gómez- Lechón María José, Co-Applicant
  • Dr García-Cañaveras Juan C., Co-Applicant

Location

  • IIS-Hospital La Fe, Valencia, Spain

Title

  • Assessment of donor liver quality/function prior to transplant

Orthotopic liver transplantation is the primary therapy for end-stage liver disease and acute liver failure. Clinicians still have to rely on a subjective interpretation of the morphological aspects of the organ, and also on clinical and histological data, to decide whether to use a graft or not. Donor liver quality significantly influences graft performance after transplantation, which ultimately affects graft and patient survival. The risk of early allograft dysfunction is circa 27%. Despite this, objective biomarkers for fast graft quality assessment are still lacking. The comprehensive metabolomic analysis of a considerable number of donor liver biopsies, collected before OLT, has allowed us to decipher a set of biomarkers that are associated with early allograft dysfunction and can be related to the graft quality function before transplant. In the near future, the rapid determination of this set biomarkers and others will allow the fast assessment of grafts in the short time between organ procurement and before preparing the recipient for implantation.
Here we propose to further validate our previous results by the metabolic profiling of a larger number of donor livers on the one hand, and to develop a mass spectrometry method to quantitatively determine the metabolites comprised in the metabolomic biosignature in under 20 min on the other hand. This methodology may become a clinical tool to help surgeons make the decision as to whether to accept an organ or not, and to make the most of the limited resources available.

Progress Report
Final Report