As we wish to bring our Congress to the entire international transplantation community, and in everyone’s individual time zone, we developed a program and schedule that would allow all delegates to access the Congress programming during two time periods regardless of geographic region.

Visit www.tts2020.org for full details

Dr. Jeremy R. Chapman, Editor-in-Chief, Transplantation

The ILTS Consensus Conference on Transplant Oncology: Setting the Stage

Sapisochin G, Hibi T, Ghobrial M, et al.
Transplantation: June 2020 - Volume 104 - Issue 6 - p 1119-1120

The international Liver Transplantation Society held a meeting to discuss the many aspects of care that arise from transplanting patients with malignancy. In this introductory commentary the four authors at the centre of the effort outline the issues that are current in what has been labelled transplant oncology and point to the individual sections of the consensus guidelines that emerged from the meeting. The four individual papers are also in the issues and include the role of liver transplantation in: 1. cholangiocarcinoma and mixed hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma; 2. colorectal and neuroendocrine liver metastases and Hepatoblastoma; 3. management of Hepatocellular carcinoma with the prospect of liver transplantation and; 4. Post-transplant management of recipients transplanted for Hepatocellular carcinoma.  If you are looking for a description of the current management and future perspectives in this area of liver disease then this is the place to find it.

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The Transplantation Society (TTS) and our journal Transplantation have developed online resources to keep you informed on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

• TTS Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard
  www.tts.org/covid-19
• Transplantation Global Transplantation COVID Report
  www.tts.org/txjcovid19

We are also requesting contributions and news from the transplant community to be sent to covid-19@tts.org for inclusion on our resources page.

In this dashboard, you will find links to TTS and other global and regional resources, as well as interactive maps, publications and webinars. We encourage you to explore this dashboard and share with your colleagues.

Website - www.tts.org/covid-19

Editors and contributors to Transplantation have shared their thoughts on how they are dealing with the current crisis. While we understand that the information of today may be quite different tomorrow in this fast-moving pandemic, this report will open our forum of an international exchange on COVID for the transplant community.

Website - www.tts.org/txjcovid19

Please send your own contributions and news to covid-19@tts.org for inclusion on our resources page.

The global impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has greatly challenged healthcare provisions. The evolving understanding of the viral pathogenesis and methods for detection, clinical presentations, morbidity and mortality in the general population over the past 6 months is improving the outlook for patients with COVID. However, the impact on the vulnerable immunosuppressed solid organ transplant patients is much less appreciated. Nevertheless, the coalescence of the transplant community around reporting, monitoring and sharing experiences around the world has been unprecedented. Here at the ISN/TTS webinar, experts from across the globe share their experiences and provide updates on advances in management and treatment of COVID in solid organ transplant patients.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. Examine the impact of COVID on organ donation
2. Review what is known about the impact of COVID in transplant recipients
3. Consider the pathways for restarting organ transplantation in COVID endemic areas

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Living donor liver transplants for sick recipients during COVID-19 pandemic- An experience from a tertiary center in India.

Verma, S.; Aleen Agarwal, S.; Chikkala, B. R.; Dey, R.; Singh, S.; Varma, S.; Yadav, V.; Das, D.; Goyal, S.; Pandey, V. K.; Nasa, V.; Madan, K.; Shweta, S.; Tarai, B.; Gupta, S.
American Journal of Transplantation. 2020;[record in progress]

The concerns in Living Donor Liver Transplant (LDLT) are that immunosuppressed recipients and healthy donors would be exposed to nosocomial SARS‐ CoV‐2 infection. However, as described in this paper from a tertiary center in India, as patients began to suffer and die; LDLT was allowed for those who were very sick, or had just recovered from a life threatening decompensation (high MELD/ CTP score) or had malignancy.

Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in Kidney and Liver Transplant Patients: A Single-Center Experience.

Aydincan Akdur, Emre Karakaya, Ebru H. Ayvazoglu Soy, Omar Alshalabi, Mahir Kirnap, Hande Arslan, Gaye Ulubay, Koray Hekimoglu, Gokhan Moray, Mehmet Haberal
Experimental and Clinical Transplantation (2020) 3: 270-274

This article included 583 transplant patients (509 kidney and 74 liver) who were screened at a single transplant center in Turkey between March 1 and May 1, 2020. 18 patients had respiratory symptoms and only one patient diagnosed with COVID-19.

COVID-19 in elderly kidney transplant recipients.

Marta Crespo, María José Pérez-Sáez, Dolores Redondo-Pachón, Laura Llinàs-Mallol, María Milagro Montero, Judith Villar, Carlos Arias-Cabrales, Anna Buxeda, Carla Burballa, SusanaVázquez, Thais López, Fátima Moreno, Marisa Mir, Sara Outón, Adriana Sierra, Silvia Collado, Clara Barrios, Eva Rodríguez, Laia Sans, Francesc Barbosa, Higini Cao, María Dolores Arenas, Roberto Güerri-Fernández, Juan Pablo Horcajada, Julio Pascual
American Journal of Transplantation 2020 doi: 10.1111/AJT.16096

This article describes 16 kidney transplant recipients over age of 65 with COVID-19. 33% showed renal graft dysfunction. Short-term fatality rate was 50% at a median time since admission of 3 days. Those who died were more frequently obese, frail and had underlying heart disease. Patients who died were more anemic, lymphopenic and showed higher D-dimer, C-reactive protein, and IL-6 at their first tests.

How should I manage immunosuppression in a kidney transplant patient with COVID-19? An ERA-EDTA DESCARTES expert opinion.

Umberto Maggiore, Daniel Abramowicz, Marta Crespo, Christophe Mariat, Geir Mjoen, Licia Peruzzi, Mehmet Sükrü Sever, Gabriel C Oniscu, Luuk Hilbrands, Bruno Watschinger on behalf of the DESCARTES Working Group of the ERA-EDTA

This article reviews previous published studies of kidney transplant recipients with COVID-19 and discusses current treatment options.

Rapid generation of neutralizing antibody responses in COVID-19 patients.

Mehul S. Suthar, Matthew G. Zimmerman, Robert C. Kauffman, Grace Mantus, Susanne L. Linderman, William H. Hudson, Abigail Vanderheiden, Lindsay Nyhoff, Carl W. Davis, Seyi Adekunle, Maurizio Affer, Melanie Sherman, Stacian Reynolds, Hans P. Verkerke, David N. Alter, Jeannette Guarner, Janetta Bryksin, Michael Horwath, Connie M. Arthur, Natia Saakadze, Geoffrey Hughes Smith, Srilatha Edupuganti, Erin M. Scherer, Kieffer Hellmeister, Andrew Cheng, Juliet A. Morales, Andrew S. Neish, Sean R. Stowell, Filipp Frank, Eric Ortlund, Evan Anderson, Vineet D. Menachery, Nadine Rouphael, Aneesh Mehta, David S. Stephens, Rafi Ahmed, John D. Roback, Jens Wrammert
Cell Reports Medicine. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2020.100040

This article reports a cross-sectional study of antibody responses to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein and virus neutralization activity in a cohort of 44 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The RBD-specific binding data were further validated in a clinical setting with 231 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patient samples. These findings have implications for understanding protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2, therapeutic use of immune plasma, and development of much-needed vaccines.

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June 12 - Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago announced they've performed the first successful double-lung transplant on a COVID-19 patient in the United States. The woman in her 20s was otherwise healthy but developed a severe case of COVID-19 that resulted in hospitalization, says Dr. Ankit Bharat, Northwestern's chief of thoracic surgery.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

June 11 - Scientists from Nanjing University and University of Macau have transformed the spleen into a functioning liver in living mice, which could bring new hope for patients suffering from organ shortage worldwide.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

June 10 - A large international study has demonstrated the safety of new cell therapy approaches for use in kidney transplant recipients. Transplant recipients were shown to require lower levels of immunosuppression in order to prevent organ rejection. This reduces the risk of side effects such as viral infections.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

June 10 - Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) indications are increasing sharply for patients in need of a liver transplant. A team, led by Zobair M. Younossi, MD, MPH, Betty and Guy Beatty Center for Integrated Research, Inova Health System, assessed liver transplant listing trends using chronic liver disease (CDL) etiology.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

June 10 - Select patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure who underwent liver transplantation experienced improved survival, according to study results.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

June 12 - Switching patients with transplant-ineligible multiple myeloma from a regimen containing parenterally administered bortezomib to an all oral regimen consisting of ixazomib in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone (IRd) did not appear to negatively affect rates of progression-free survival (PFS) or quality of life (QoL), according to early results from a phase 4 clinical trial presented during the Virtual Edition of the 25th European Hematology Association (EHA) Annual Congress.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital

A 66-Year-Old Liver Transplant Recipient with COVID-19

• Jay A. Fishman, M.D.
  Transplant Infectious Diseases,
  Massachusetts General Hospital, United States
  
• Matthew B. Roberts, M.B., B.S.
  Transplant Infectious Diseases,
  Massachusetts General Hospital, United States
  
• Eric W. Zhang, M.D.
  Thoracic Imaging and Intervention, Radiology,
  Massachusetts General Hospital, United States
  
• Deepali Kumar, M.D.
  Transplant Infectious Diseases,
  University of Toronto, Canada
• Hans H. Hirsch, M.D., MSc.
  Transplantation & Clinical Virology,
  Biomedicine Infectious Diseases,
  University Hospital Basel, Switzerland
• Umberto Maggiore, M.D.
  Transplant Nephrology,
  University of Parma, Italy

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After careful consideration, and in light of the ongoing Coronavirus developments, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the ITS 2020 Meeting in Europe to 2022. Stay tuned for dates and location.

We would like to take this opportunity to confirm that we will have the 2021 ITS meeting in the San Diego area from October 17-20, 2021.
Further details will be available this summer.

We look forward to hosting you in California next year.
Until then, stay safe and healthy!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE WEBSITE