Solid Organ Transplant Rejection
Organ transplantation, once rarely performed, has become commonplace in modern medical surgical practice. On any given day, more than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting to receive a donor organ, according to the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Patients fortunate to receive a transplanted organ still face a number of medical challenges, the biggest of which is usually organ rejection.
A transplant recipient must be on a regimen of drugs designed to prevent the host immune system from rejecting the new organ. Unfortunately, many anti-rejection drugs have significant cardiovascular and renal toxicities. Thus, while these drugs decrease the risk of rejection, they sometimes contribute to long-term cardiovascular complications by causing increases in blood pressure, elevations in cholesterol, and development of diabetes as well as reduced kidney function. Bristol-Myers Squibb is currently testing an investigational compound in late-stage development to determine whether it will reduce or avoid some of the problems associated with current therapy.