"Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients with kidney transplants," Vincenti said. "That is why it is critical to find anti-rejection therapies that may help to minimize cardiovascular risk in this patient population."
LEA29Y is an injectable protein therapeutic that is designed to suppress the body's immune response to a transplanted organ. When a kidney is transplanted from one person into another, the recipient's immune system triggers a hostile response against the new organ, setting off a chain of events that can cause rejection of the transplanted organ. Immunosuppressive drugs greatly decrease the risks of rejection, helping protect the transplanted organ and preserve its function.
Two signals are required for T-cells to become fully activated and initiate an immune response against a transplanted organ. LEA29Y works by preventing the second, or co-stimulatory, signal from occurring, thereby blocking the activation of T-cells and the subsequent immune response that can ultimately lead to rejection of the transplanted organ.
LEA29Y is based on research into the molecular basis of immune tolerance. Its precursor, CTLA4Ig, was first shown to induce transplant tolerance in research by immunologist Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, UCSF professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Diabetes Center. Bluestone is director of the UCSF-based Immune Tolerance Network, an NIH-funded international network of more than 80 researchers coordinating clinical testing of new therapies to induce immune tolerance.
Christian Larsen, MD, of Emory University, another of the clinical trial's primary investigators, has also studied LEA29Y in animal models. "This study is part of the ongoing research being conducted to investigate whether a selective co-stimulation modulator, such as LEA29Y, can reduce the ris
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Contact: Janet Basu
jbasu@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
17-May-2004