The themes of the meeting reflect TTS’ commitment to an outcome-driven approach to transplantation. The meeting will provide an opportunity for members to meet and connect with colleagues and mentors.

To this end, program chair Phil O’Connell is developing a vibrant program with the active participation from TTS Section leaders and representatives of Sociedad Espanola de Trasplante (SET) and the Sociedad Madrilena de Trasplante (SMT).

The pre-meeting days of June 30th and July 1st will be busy. Not only are we holding the always popular post-graduate course, but SET has elected to have their annual meeting during these two days. In this way, our Spanish colleagues will be able to enjoy both the SET and the TTS congresses. During these pre-meeting days, we will also benefit from sessions from the Transplant Infectious Disease Section, the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group and the International Transplant Nurses Society (ITNS). Other workshops planned include International Pancreas and Islet Transplantation Association (IPITA), Xenotransplantation and Virtual Global Transplant Lab (vGTL).

We are in the process of determining topics and speakers for State-of-the-Art Symposiums that are proposed by special interest groups with TTS – We welcome suggestions of topics and speakers.

Madrid provides a vibrant, exciting meeting site with incredible troves of art, great architecture, fantastic food and near perfect weather.

We look forward to seeing you all in Madrid!

PLENARY SESSIONS INCLUDE

ITNS was pleased to have The Transplantation Society exhibit at the Transplant Nursing Symposium in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA from 24 to 26 June 2017. Over 300 transplant nurses were in attendance and highlights from the symposium included keynote speakers Linda Ohler, MSN RN CCTC FAAN FAST; and TTS’ President, Nancy Ascher, MD PhD.

Dr. Ascher’s presentation, “Transplantation Challenges: Problems and Solutions from Around the World”, explored current global challenges in the field of transplantation and strategies from international colleagues to address these complex concerns. Symposium attendees enjoyed pre-conference sessions focused on transplant administration and pharmacology, and learned about transplant practices specific to Brazil, China, Sweden, Canada, and Turkey during the International Panel. In addition to the educational offerings, attendees made time to have fun while networking at the ITNS After Dark event with poolside drinks and dancing.

ITNS is already hard at work planning the 2018 Symposiums and we hope you will join us in Berlin, Germany, June 28 to 30, 2018 for the European Transplant Nursing Symposium: Transplant Nursing in a Globalized World; and in the Chicago, Illinois, USA, September 28 to 30, 2018 for the Transplant Nursing Symposium: Transplant Nurses: Leaders in Excellence.

Allison L. Begezda
ITNS Senior Marketing Manager

In 2016, TTS President Dr. Nancy Ascher called on the Society to establish a new committee giving specialists in transplant anaesthesia and critical care a greater stake in the society and its educational mission. TTS Council approved this initiative, and Claus Niemann, of University of California San Francisco, was selected as the Committee’s first Chair.

The Anaesthesia/Critical Care Committee will work to improve standards and outcomes in perioperative care for transplant recipients in several important ways:

• Contributing to TTS Congress planning with content that improves transplant physicians’ and surgeons’ knowledge of key areas of donor and recipient care, including ICU and perioperative management of the organ donor, anesthesia management of the transplant recipient, and pre- and post-transplant critical care.

• Collaborating with other TTS committees, special interest groups, and other societies in the development of appropriate quality measures, standards of care, and training guidelines in both donor and recipient perioperative management.

• Developing online educational content for the TTS website. This would focus on two main areas:

  1. Topics of multidisciplinary interest, as for the Congress. These include donor management and research, recipient risk assessment, fluid and coagulation management, pain control, and others.

  2. Areas of Anesthesia / Critical Care practice not well covered by other specialist societies. These ‘orphan’ subspecialities include kidney transplantation, simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation, abdominal multi-visceral transplantation, and combined thoraco-abdominal procedures. The aim will be to raise standards in perioperative care through the provision of expert education and guidance.

• Advising the Society on other matters relevant to the TTS mission.

There was a noted limited attendance from the Heart and Lung transplant community at the 26th International TTS Congress in Hong Kong last year. Therefore, during the TTS Council meeting which took place in Vancouver this past March, the case was made to form a separate Heart & Lung Committee with regard to giving the field relevance, opportunity, and representation under a broader umbrella of the Society. Notwithstanding the presence of the International Society of Heart & Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), the smaller European Society of Heart & Lung Transplantation (ESHLT), the growing European Society of Transplantation (ESOT), and multiple dedicated national HLT societies, the benefits of cross-discipline academic and clinical dialogue on a global scale have been very much under-estimated. A trend towards centralization of clinical transplant services and an increasing number of combined-organ transplants have forced a necessarily closer and relevant collaboration between separate organ transplant units. At an international level, there are obvious opportunities for:

• learning from each other;
• establishing clinical and research collaborations; and,
• creating additional networks for mentorship and training.

One of the major advantages of TTS is in its ability to authoritatively represent all the diverse clinical transplant views and activities. To this end, it remains the organization with the strongest relationships with governments and important international agencies such as the WHO.

The Executive Committee unanimously approved the need for a Heart & Lung Committee. This affiliation is working well for the larger disciplines of kidney and liver transplantation, where the biennial TTS Congress serves as an additional forum for greater inter-disciplinary collaboration without conflict with the work of individual organ-specific societies. A key advantage of the TTS Congress is in the thematic sessions with input from all the organs such as for machine perfusion or immunosuppressive strategies. Similarly, the Society’s journals Transplantation and Transplantation Direct, provide significant academic platforms for a timely publication of manuscripts, including those that would benefit from or are aimed at a wider audience in the transplant community.

The Heart & Lung Committee will have global geographical representation and informal canvassing of opinion suggests considerable interest in its membership. Anyone with enthusiastic interest to join this committee and contribute to its activities should send a brief bio to chelsea.patriquin@tts.org by 15th August 2017. The new committee will be announced by end of August. This leaves two and a half months before the abstract submission deadline of November 15th for next year’s 27th International TTS Congress in Madrid, Spain.

Although many TTS members have registered interest in the Heart & Lung section of the congress, very few are actually from the discipline. The Committee therefore asks the abdominal transplant community to encourage their colleagues in Heart & Lung transplantation to seek membership in both the Society and the Heart & Lung committee.

We hope to build on this foundation and have a bigger presence at the Madrid congress next year, for which Tobias Deuse (San Francisco, USA) and Anne Dipchand (Toronto, Canada) are putting together an excellent scientific program for the Heart & Lung section.

After a two-year stint and a seventeen-episode webinar module, the Advanced Renal Transplantation Interactive Teaching Series has reached its successful conclusion. With almost a thousand accesses and over fifty international speakers under its umbrella, its content was appreciated worldwide and will be a part of the TTS archives for future viewing. The Working Group who devoted time to designing the content and delivery will begin other organ-specific modules later in the year.

The Committee has renewed its commitment to educate schoolchildren about organ donation and transplantation. The Committee has recently entered a partnership with the Dutch Transplant Foundation and the Canadian Society of Transplantation to elaborate content and strategize a core curriculum. The aim of the 17 members of the group is to address students’ curiosities and concerns from as early as 10 years of age. After seeing the success from London, Ontario and in The Netherlands, the Working Group has a vision of conquering worldwide distribution for its content with the help of ongoing partnerships. When asked about the partnership, the Dutch Transplant Foundation stated, “We are enthusiastic and proud that TTS showed their interest in our educational program, Donorwise, for ages 12 to 20. We’re looking forward to a fruitful collaboration and outcome”.

Alongside these activities, the Committee has devoted time to reaching out and forming partnerships with like-minded societies and associations. Among them, the International Transplant Nurses Society (ITNS) and the Committee have formed a specific Working Group to echo the need of educating nurses crossing over to transplantation from other fields. A Transplant Nursing 101 curriculum will be crafted to address both nurses’ and doctors’ needs on topics such as transplant immunology, pharmacology, post-transplant complications, and organ-specific basics to learn from. The Working Group is planning to launch the curriculum at a Pre-Meeting Symposium to take place at TTS 2018 on July 1, 2018 in Madrid.

The World Transplant Games Federation has also entered a partnership with TTS to promote patient wellness. The Working Group is comprised of allied health professionals, physicians and professors as expert advisors in providing insight on how to promote a culture of wellness in transplant recipients. This Working Group will also present a variety of topics during a Pre-Meeting Symposium at TTS 2018 addressing transplant recipient needs from their point of view.

This past May saw the 15th Transplantation Science Symposium held in the beautiful city of Victoria British Columbia, Canada. Local Meeting Chairs, Megan Levings (Vancouver) and Lori West (Edmonton), put together a fantastic program. One innovative inclusion in the program was a screening of the documentary film “Vital Bonds”, which provided an incredibly moving insight into the world of transplantation from the perspective of donor families, transplant recipients and the retrieval teams, surgeons, physicians and nurses. Screened in the evening over popcorn, the movie was followed by an engaging Q&A session with the documentary Director Niobe Thompson.

The Symposium was well represented by the global transplant science community, highlighting the continued interest and desire for a stand-alone transplant science meeting. The broad international attendance was well supported by the 2017 Mentee-Mentor Awards. These prestigious awards were co-sponsored by the Transplant Science Committee and regional transplant societies. Award partners included the Japan Society for Transplantation (JST), the Nederlandse Transplantatie Vereniging (NTV), the Indian Society of Organ Transplantation (ISOT), the Sociedad Espanola de Trasplante (SET) and the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ). In addition, five awards were supported by TTS and the Transplantation Science Committee. This year saw the first time that a previous recipient of an award as mentee receive an award as a mentor.

We look forward to the next TTS meeting to be held in Madrid in June/July 2018, and what promises to be an exciting and informative program. Young investigators are recommended to look out for Mentee-Mentor Awards from the Transplantation Science Committee and regional transplant societies to support their attendance.

The Young Members Committee (YMC) is growing! We now have representation from 6 continents, and are moving forward with our mission to promote career development opportunities for our youngest members. To this end, we now have a quarterly feature article under the “Young Members Corner” in the Pulse. May’s article focused on pursing an academic career in transplantation and featured Dr. Jose Camargo a member of YMC.

We also have big plans for the upcoming 27th Congress of The Transplantation Society in Madrid, Spain. The YMC has developed several program proposals focused on career development both at the trainee and junior faculty levels. We will also be hosting another networking event, as the launch of our first ever networking event met with great success in Hong Kong at the 2016 congress.

We are excited to be a part of TTS and to have the support of our leadership. The future is bright in transplantation. Stay tuned for more great things coming from the YMC.

The Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG) Executive and Council members met in Mexico in April to review their current and projected activities in the quest to combat organ trafficking. A key activity at present involves preparations for the 10th Anniversary of the Declaration of Istanbul, which will be celebrated during the 27th International Congress of The Transplantation Society taking place in Madrid in 2018.

The DICG has convened four working groups to review and update the Declaration in anticipation of this anniversary, to ensure it continues to provide effective guidance for professionals and policy makers addressing new, emerging and persisting challenges in organ trafficking and ‘transplant tourism’. A meeting of the working groups will take place on the 9-10th September 2016 in Geneva following the ISODP conference, to produce a document discussing proposed updates. This document will be used in a targeted public consultation planned for October-December 2017, during which it will be disseminated to DICG members, organizations which have endorsed the Declaration, and other stakeholders, for their review and feedback.

In other news, Dr. Beatriz Dominguez-Gil has recently stepped down as Co-Chair of the DICG in order to assume her new position as Director of the Spanish National Transplant Organization (ONT). She will continue to contribute to the DICG as a member of the Executive Committee. Dr. Dominique Martin, another longstanding DICG member has now joined Dr. Elmi Muller as DICG Co-Chair. TTS members can learn more about the work of the DICG by visiting the website www.declarationofistanbul.org, or by contacting a member of the DICG Council based in their region. You can find the list of current councilors on the website, or contact the DICG via media@declarationofistanbul.com if you have any questions. To keep track of news relating to organ trafficking and transplant tourism, please follow the Facebook page or Twitter account.

The Women in Transplantation initiative held a strategic planning retreat in Montreal in May, coinciding with the international meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, which held a symposium entitled “Sex and Gender Issues in Transplantation: From Stem Cells to Whole Organs”, and featuring invited presentations from WIT members Dr. Lori West and Dr. Beth Foster. Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, Scientific Director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, who addressed the WIT membership at the 2016 TTS Congress in Hong Kong, was a key organizer of the OSSD conference, which extended a warm welcome to WIT members.

The two-day retreat, facilitated by Noël Theodosiou of Luminous LLC, was well-attended by 15 individuals with broad geographical representation including North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Highly engaged, the discussing took a wide-ranging and high-level look at what WIT has accomplished and what issues are most pressing to address moving forward. Two pillars of work emerged as key opportunities for WIT leadership. The first is to continue WIT’s original work as a career-development and mentoring group, linking women transplant professionals around the world and offering mentorship and networking opportunities. This work is felt to be highly valuable and meets a continuing need to address barriers to women achieving their full potential. It is also well-understood that the precise nature of the issues varies considerably across geographic regions, thus continued exploration of a variety of mechanisms will be needed to address the issues. The major goals will be to ensure that women are fully represented at leadership levels of our professional organizations, as speakers and moderators at relevant regional, national and international conferences, and as recipients of major funding through grants and awards.

The second major pillar of work that WIT is ideally positioned to address is to lead efforts to study issues of both sex and gender in the content of our work. Sex as a biologic variable is important to all scientific research, including basic and clinical research and clinical care in transplantation, ranging from cellular level to animal level to human. Gender as a social and cultural variable is important in clinical, policy, and systems issues in donation and transplantation. Ensuring that these issues are included in the clinical work we do, in the science we undertake and report and in the policy development in which we are involved, is an area which the WIT leadership members see as highly impactful and in need of leadership. The one-pager output from the WIT retreat can be read here, as well as next concrete steps for moving forward.

Delegates at the recently held 16th IPITA Congress in Oxford were greeted by an unusually warm weather, which brought a summery feel to a wonderful scientific program.

The Congress truly was an event where interaction and networking were a permanent concern. Sessions were organized to bring together the beta cell replacement communities, rather than sending them to the usual separate pancreas and islet break-out rooms. This was exemplified in the pre-meeting symposium, in which the challenges of hypoxia and ischemia in pancreas and islet transplantation were discussed as a common transversal topic. Pre-meeting symposia were also held for our Young Investigator and Allied Health Professional groups, and organized by them on their topics of interest and with their preferred format.

Format was given a clear creative touch, with the will of the organizing committee to explore innovative ways of communicating science in stimulating fashion. The opening session was held as a kind of “talk show”, addressing the strengths and weaknesses, challenges and opportunities, the field of beta cell replacement therapies has to face. A “Dragon’s Den” session, in which 3 scientists had to convince 4 merciless “dragons” of the superiority of their “out-of-the-box” ideas, was a tremendous success. Audience participation in both these sessions demonstrated the value of exploring novel formats, without of course losing substance in favor of style.

Cutting-edge science was also presented by invited lecturers and abstracts presenters in more traditional formats. But tradition was brought to its utmost the last evening of the congress, in a farewell dinner held in Oxfordian splendour at the Balliol College dining hall, in a setting very much reminiscent of the final scenes of Harry Potter movies.

The IPITA Council sends its warm thanks and congratulations to our hosts, Congress co-chairs Paul Johnson and Peter Friend, for having offered a truly remarkable and stimulating meeting in a fantastic environment, and with the typically friendly IPITA atmosphere.

The 9th Congress of the International Pediatric Transplant Association (IPTA) took place in Barcelona, Spain, from May 27-30, 2017. It was a great success both in terms of an excellent attendance and of its scientific quality. Topics being addressed were the newest technologies in immunology and transplant research, updates and new data from ongoing pediatric transplant clinical trials (CTOTC), long-term complications following transplantation, standards for surveillance and treatment of infections in transplantation, perspectives in immune tolerance, up-to-date data from important registries, protocols to minimize immunosuppression, new and emerging immunosuppressive agents, appropriate selection of adult donor organs to be used for pediatric recipients, ethical dilemmas in pediatric transplantation, devices used to support transplantation, issues in noncompliance and transfer of care, and clinical trial design and endpoints for testing new therapies in children. There were special sessions designed for allied health-care professionals (AHP), who have a strong international AHP community within IPTA.

A memorable event of the congress was the Congress Awards of Distinction session: The IPTA Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed post-hum to William Harmon; the Pioneer in Transplantation Award to Benedict Cosimi; the Distinguished Allied Health Professional Award to Rochelle Liverman; and the Young Scholars Award to Pankaj Chandak.. Our efforts to involve young physicians were also underlined by six IPTA-TTS Congress Scientific Awards for the best oral presentations and four awards for the best poster presentations. The abstracts of the Congress are published in a special issue of our journal Pediatric Transplantation, and the recorded sessions from the Congress are available for viewing on our website.

The meeting was followed by a networking social event at the beautiful Hospital Sant Pau, built in the year 1401, one of Barcelona’s many historical sites. Attendees from around the globe had the opportunity to network and plan for future clinical and research collaboration.

We are most grateful to Anne Dipchand, the 2017 Congress Chair and current IPTA President, for organizing such a successful congress! We are looking forward to your collaboration and participation as we celebrate our 10th Congress in Vancouver, Canada, from May 4–7, 2019, co-organized by Professors Mignon McCulloch and Carlos Esquivel, and held in the delightful location of the Westin Bayshore Hotel Vancouver.

We are very excited about our upcoming joint meeting with the Canadian Society of Transplantation in Halifax, Canada to be held at the world trade and convention center from 26-29th of September 2017. The meeting provides a unique platform for basic scientists and clinician to interact and facilitate the transition of cellular therapies from bench to bedside.

The Society is looking for enthusiastic researchers working in any aspect of cellular and regenerative medicine to join the Council; the advert is out on our website for nominations.

The Society is actively looking to support workshops - at least one per year - to bring the researchers in one particular aspect together to network and come up with guideline or consensus statements under the banner of CTRMS. We hope this initiative will improve cross talk between scientists who work in their area of interest while we know there is lot of common grounds in cell therapies between various organs. Regulatory approvals and GMP stock resourcing are other areas where close collaboration between various cell types could be of mutual benefit.

Both CTRMS and CST welcome everyone to join us in September in Halifax.

The 2017 ISODP Congress is right around the corner and promises to be an inspirational, educational and invigorating meeting bringing together global experts to discuss and debate new innovations, evolving science and breakthrough results. Hosted in Geneva Switzerland, the hub of considerable international collaboration including the site of the World Health Organization, the Congress will showcase best practices from across Europe and the world. The Scientific Program Committee and Congress Board has designed an innovative program focused on the key issues facing organ donation today and in the future.

A wide range of topics will address donation as part of good end-of-life care, evolving methods and results in Donation after Circulatory Death, expanding living donation, economic aspects of donation and multiple other topics. Plenary sessions focusing on innovative concepts in pursuit of an unlimited supply of organs for transplant give a glimpse both at what is happening today and what will soon be reality.

We are excited that Dr. Alvin Roth, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor of Economics at Stanford University, will deliver a keynote address on the Economical Aspects of Paired Donation. Creating and sustaining living donation programs to maximize effectiveness and safety is an ongoing priority, with multiple presentations on current best practices in living donation.

ISODP has a strategic priority to deepen relationship with critical care communities as essential partners in organ donation program effectiveness. Plenary sessions will focus on organ donation as part of best practice in end of life care with international experts from the United Kingdom, United States and Spain. In addition, keynote speaker Dr. Sam Shemie, Canada, will address evolving concepts in Harmonizing Practices in the Determination of Death.

Other keynote speakers include Dr. Harald Ott, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School; and Dr. Philippe Morel, Geneva University Hospital (HUG).

We are also pleased to announce that World Organ Donor Day will be held in conjunction with the ISODP Congress with festivities and recognition on September 9th.

We look forward to welcoming our global colleagues in organ donation in September. There is still time to register. For more information go to www.isodp2017.org.

VCA continues in its growth period. Additional vascularized composite allografts reported include uterus transplantation, penile transplantation and pediatric limb transplantation.

In 2016, two international workshops took place. The inaugural International Workshop on VCA Histopathology was held in Durham, North Carolina. The workshop was developed to exchange scientific and clinical information and to support the interchange of matters surrounding VCA histopathology including the Banff scoring system. Physicians and investigators from eleven centers that have performed clinical VCA worldwide participated in the discussion around the topic “Grades and Stages of Rejection: Toward Clinical Correlation”.

The 2nd Chauvet Workshop was held in Paris, France. The workshop included attendees from centers from Europe, USA, Turkey, India, and Australia representing teams involved in upper extremity, face, and uterus transplantation. Topics highlighted in the discussion included the psychosocial assessment and management of these clinical applications. A summary of the discussions will be available at our ISVCA website soon.

The 13th Congress of the ISVCA will be held in Salzburg, Austria on October 26–27, 2017. Investigators and everyone interested in VCA from across the world will assemble to discuss and talk about the challenges and advances of Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation. Speakers will include leaders in VCA and other solid organ transplants, immunology, reconstructive surgery, rehabilitation and regenerative medicine, pathology, and ethics. The meeting will include plenary sessions and abstract presentations providing an overview of current developments and new perspectives. We will welcome you to Salzburg and look forward to your involvement and contributions to VCA. For more information please visit the meeting website at www.isvca2017.org.

Finally, don’t forget to vote to the election of the new board of the society. The ISVCA is privileged to benefit from work of professionals dedicated to the advancement of vascularized composite allotransplantation through service as Board or Council members, however the contribution and dedication of all members is indispensable for our future. The new Board and Council members will be announced at our upcoming ISVCA Congress in Salzburg.

It is our great pleasure to invite you to the next Congress of the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA), which will be in Baltimore, USA on September 20-23, 2017. The SMC Campus Center of the University of Maryland provides an amazing location for this event. Set in the heart of the historic city of Baltimore, it is only a short walk away from the Inner Harbor and Is close to many touristic attractions in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

The IXA meeting will be associated with two scientific satellite events: the Hyperimmunized/ iABO Symposium, hosted by Dr. Robert Montgomery of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, will precede the Congress on September 20th; and immediately following, the Swine in Biomedical Research Meeting, hosted by Drs. Bhanu Telugu, of the University of Maryland; and Randall S. Prather, of the University of Missouri. These coordinated events were designed to promote a truly interdisciplinary exchange of scientific progress and concepts among investigators active in three different, but increasingly related and overlapping fields.

Designed with the help of the Scientific Program Committee, the program of the Congress features keynote and plenary talks on topics of particular interest to IXA members, such as “Building the Future” by Martine Rothblatt, “CRISPR Technology” by George Church, “Genetic Engineering” by Sean Stevens, and “Mechanisms of Inflammation” by Ajit Varki. Additional highlights of the program include a special lecture by Megan Sykes; the Reemtsma Award, by David White; and, a session on innovative organ design by Juan Carlos Belmonte and Harald Ott.

As recent progress in the field has rejuvenated hope for clinical xenotransplantation, the program features unique theological and ethical sessions, as well as a satellite symposium organized with the FDA to discuss regulatory aspects.

We are excited about the high number of abstracts received and look forward to warmly welcoming you to Baltimore.

The Transplant Infectious Disease Section (TID) of TTS is preparing for its annual meeting on September 2, 2017. This year will be the 11th International TID Conference, which will be held in Montevideo, Uruguay – one day before the start of the XXIV Congreso of the Sociedad de Trasplante de America Latina y El Caribe (STALYC 2017).

This is the first TID Conference to be held in a South American country, opportune timing as the region’s transplant centers have recently faced major challenges with tropical and emerging infectious diseases. The conference program will cover most of the relevant topics in transplant infectious diseases, with additional emphasis on geographically restricted infections such as zika virus, endemic mycoses, Chagas disease, and yellow fever that may also impact transplant recipients in non-endemic countries.

With an international panel of captivating expert speakers, the conference promises to be a great success. In a world where infectious disease boundaries are increasingly tenuous, the audience will have the opportunity to get an overview of relevant and up-to-date topics in the field of transplant infectious diseases. It will also be an unparalleled opportunity for networking with transplant professionals from across the globe, as we all work together to recognize and overcome novel infectious challenges to the health of our vulnerable transplant patients.