An Important Message from the IXA Council

Agnès Marie Azimzadeh, Ph.D

In Memoriam - Agnès Marie Azimzadeh, Ph.D

The International Xenotransplantation Association is deeply saddened by the recent passing of our President, Agnès Azimzadeh.

Our friend and colleague Agnès Azimzadeh, passed away on March 15, 2021, after a courageous battle with intestinal cancer. She leaves her devoted husband, Djavad; their sons Julien and Philippe, and Julien’s wife Rebecca; her parents, Simone and Bernard Isabey; and her brother Daniel Isabey. The scientific and clinical transplant communities she touched at Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Maryland, and around the world join her family in celebrating her life, and mourning her premature loss.

Continue reading - In Memoriam - Agnès Marie Azimzadeh, Ph.D

Highlighted Publication

COVID Vax in the Immunosuppressed: Reason for Concern
— Discomfiting results in new study

MedPage Today Op-Ed by Dorry Segev, MD, PhD - March 15, 2021
Taking care of a lot of immunosuppressed patients, one big question my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I have had throughout the pandemic has been: Will vaccines rescue them from the COVID-19 threat? Based on a new study we published today in JAMA, the answer appears to be: only for some

Journal Updates

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The editors of this journal are pleased to offer electronic publication of accepted papers prior to print publication. These papers can be cited using the date of access and the unique DOI number. Any final changes in manuscripts will be made at the time of print publication and will be reflected in the final electronic version of the issue.

Cellular and Molecular Crosstalk of Graft Endothelial Cells During AMR: Effector Functions and Mechanisms
Antibody-Mediated Rejection and the Graft Endothelium in Solid Organ Transplantation
Casirivimab-Imdevimab for Treatment of COVID-19 in Solid Organ Transplant Recipients: an Early Experience
The Classification of Biliary Strictures ın Patients With Right Lobe Liver Transplant Recipients and Its Relation to Traversing the Stricture With a Guidewire
Recommendations and guidance on nutritional supplementation in the liver transplant setting

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Hot off the Press

«HOT OFF THE PRESS»
RECENT PUBLICATIONS IDENTIFIED
BY TTS EDUCATION COMMITTEE ON COVID-19

Selected Publications by TTS Education Committee. This week's selection made by Drs. Enver Akalin and Marlies Reinders.

Antibody Responses in Seropositive Persons after a Single Dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccine

Florian Krammer et al.
NEJM March 10, 2021. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2101667

This study analyzed antibody responses in 110 study participants with (n=43) or without (n=67) documented preexisting SARS-CoV-2 immunity, who received their first spike mRNA vaccine dose in 2020 (88 received the Pfizer vaccine and 22 the Moderna vaccine). The antibody titers of vaccinees with preexisting immunity were 10 to 45 times as high as those of vaccinees without preexisting immunity at the same time points after the first vaccine dose (e.g., 25 times as high at 13 to 16 days) and also exceeded the median antibody titers measured in participants without preexisting immunity after the second vaccine dose by more than a factor of 6. Although the antibody titers of the vaccinees without preexisting immunity increased by a factor of 3 after the second vaccine dose, no increase in antibody titers was observed in the Covid-19 survivors who received the second vaccine dose.

Read full article

Genome-wide CRISPR screening identifies TMEM106B as a proviral host factor for SARS-CoV-2

Jim Baggen et al.
Nat Genet. 2021 Mar 8. doi: 10.1038/s41588-021-00805-2.

This study discovered that SARS-CoV-2 requires the lysosomal protein TMEM106B to infect human cell lines and primary lung cells. TMEM106B overexpression enhanced SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as pseudovirus infection, suggesting a role in viral entry. Furthermore, single-cell RNA-sequencing of airway cells from patients with COVID-19 demonstrated that TMEM106B expression correlates with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The present study uncovered a collection of coronavirus host factors that may be exploited to develop drugs against SARS-CoV-2 infection or future zoonotic coronavirus outbreaks.

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Multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants escape neutralization by vaccine-induced humoral immunity

Wilfredo F. Garcia-Beltran et al.
Cell March 8 2021,

This study evaluated the neutralization potency of 99 individuals that received one or two doses of either BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines against pseudoviruses representing 10 globally circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2. Five of the 10 pseudoviruses, harboring receptor-binding domain mutations, including K417N/T, E484K, and N501Y, were highly resistant to neutralization. Cross-neutralization of B.1.351 variants was comparable to SARS-CoV and bat-derived WIV1- CoV, suggesting that a relatively small number of mutations can mediate potent escape from vaccine responses. While the clinical impact of neutralization resistance remains uncertain, these results highlight the potential for variants to escape from neutralizing humoral immunity and emphasize the need to develop broadly protective interventions against the evolving pandemic.

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Upcoming Webinars

New Date!
ISN-TTS JOINT WEBINAR
Donor/Recipient Pair:
RISKS VS. GAINS - KIDNEY FUNCTION

March 23, 2021
2:00 PM CET / 9:00 AM EDT (MONTREAL TIME)

Open to all healthcare professionals

Speaker: Marcelo Cantarovich, TTS President
Moderator: Jean Tchervenkov, Montreal, Canada

Click for details

Free to attend

Wednesday, April 7, 2021
2:00PM - 6:00PM (İstanbul Time Zone)

The Middle East Society For Organ Transplantation (MESOT) invites you to a new webinar on How to Increase Organ Donation and Transplantation in Our Region during the Covid-19 Pandemic Period.

With COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the globe since last year, it had the immediate effect of severely reducing living and deceased organ donation and transplantation activity worldwide.

Click for details

LATEST VIDEO - March 1 COVID & Vaccines Webinar is now available!

Watch Video

IN THE NEWS

Risk factors, histopathological features and graft outcome of transplant glomerulopathy in the absence of donor-specific HLA antibodies

March 8 - Transplant glomerulopathy is established as a hallmark of chronic antibody-mediated rejection in kidney transplant patients with donor-specific HLA antibodies (HLA-DSA). The clinical importance of transplant glomerulopathy in the absence of HLA-DSA is not well established.

CRISPR-Based Anti-Viral Therapy Could One Day Foil the Flu—and COVID-19

by Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director

March 16 - CRISPR gene-editing technology has tremendous potential for making non-heritable DNA changes that can treat or even cure a wide range of devastating disorders, from HIV to muscular dystrophy Now, a recent animal study shows that another CRISPR system—targeting viral RNA instead of human DNA—could work as an inhaled anti-viral therapeutic...

On-the-Spot Gene Readouts Offer Clues to How Cells Work

by Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director

March 11 - Just as two companies can merge to expand their capabilities, two technologies can become more powerful when integrated into one. That’s why researchers recently merged two breakthrough technologies into one super powerful new method called ExSeq. The two-in-one technology enables researchers for the first time to study an intact tissue sample and track genetic activity on the spot within a cell’s tiniest recesses, or microenvironments—areas that have been largely out of reach until now.

Study: Lots of Papers and Citations Don't Make for Twitter Stardom — No crossover seen from traditional publishing success

by Nicole Lou, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

March 15, 2021 - Academic productivity, at least by one measure, did not factor into Twitter popularity in the interventional cardiology community, researchers found.

Op-Ed: COVID Shot While on a Blood Thinner? — One hematologist's strategy for addressing concerns

by Stephan Moll, MD

March 14, 2021 - As COVID-19 vaccination continues to roll out to older and medically eligible people across the country, many questions arise for those taking blood thinners.

5 important tips about COVID-19 vaccines for heart failure, heart transplant patients

March 10 - As more and more Americans receive their COVID-19 vaccine, heart failure patients and heart transplant recipients may have specific questions about how they should proceed. Can they be vaccinated? If so, what are the potential side effects?

Good outcomes seen after corneal transplantation in patients older than 90 years

March 11 - Corneal transplantation is a safe procedure for patients older than 90 years, with significant visual improvement and graft survival of 88% at 12 months, according to a study performed at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

UPCOMING MEETINGS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

CAST 2021

JULY 25-28, 2021 • VIRTUAL

The 17th Congress of The Asian Society of Transplantation (CAST 2021) (www.cast2021.my).

Liver BMT 2021 - Turkey

JUNE 24-25, 2021 • KIZILCAHAMAM-TURKEY

International Symposium on Benign and Malignant Tumors in Liver With or Without Cirrhosis (www.liverbmt2021.com).

MESOT 2021

SEPTEMBER 3-5, 2021 • AMMAN-JORDAN

17th Congress of the Middle East Society For Organ Transplantation (MESOT 2021) (www.mesot-tx.org).

CIRTA 2021

JUNE 30 - JULY 2, 2021 • AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

17th Congress of the Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplant Association (CIRTA 2021) (www.cirta2021.co.nz).

IXA-CTRMS 2021

September 23-35, 2021

Virtual 2021 Congress of the International Xenotransplantation Association and Cell Transplant and Regenerative Medicine Society (www.ixa-ctrms2021.org).

ISODP 2021

November 3-6, 2021 • Las Vegas, NV, USA

2021 Organ Donation Congresss, organized by the International Society for Donation and Transplantation (ISODP 2021) (www.isodp2021.org).

Member Login

An Important Message from the IXA Council

In Memoriam - Agnès Marie Azimzadeh, Ph.D

Highlighted Publication

COVID Vax in the Immunosuppressed: Reason for Concern
— Discomfiting results in new study

Journal Updates

WEEK'S MOST
DOWNLOADED PAPER

Online First

Hot off the Press

«HOT OFF THE PRESS»
RECENT PUBLICATIONS IDENTIFIED
BY TTS EDUCATION COMMITTEE ON COVID-19

Antibody Responses in Seropositive Persons after a Single Dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccine

Genome-wide CRISPR screening identifies TMEM106B as a proviral host factor for SARS-CoV-2

Multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants escape neutralization by vaccine-induced humoral immunity

Upcoming Webinars