̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - donor

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to establish two new Blood and Transplant Research Units

sjr81 — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 15:07:08 +0000

Cambridge has received funding for two units under the £12.1 million scheme. ̽��ֱ��Units will be centres of excellence in human experimental medicine related to blood and transplantation and will have a strong focus on translation. They will support the delivery of objectives and functions of NHS Blood and Transplant, by creating an environment where world-class research, focused on the organisation’s needs, can thrive, and will provide high quality research evidence to inform decision making at NHS Blood and Transplant.

Speaking about the partnership funding awards, Dr Lorna Williamson, Medical and Research Director at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "I am delighted that the Department of Health, through the NIHR, continues to recognise the importance of blood and transplantation research. This funding supports ambitious experimental research projects that will inform future clinical practice for services that NHS Blood and Transplant provides to the NHS and beyond."

Professor Andrew Bradley, Head of the Department of Surgery at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in partnership with Professor Andrew Fisher from Newcastle ̽��ֱ��, will establish a unit focused on organ donation and transplantation. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge/Newcastle unit will focus on understanding how to improve the quality of organs prior to donation and will develop and evaluate novel approaches and technologies that increase the availability of suitable donor organs for transplantation, while improving graft survival.

Professor John Danesh from the Cambridge Institute of Public Health will lead a unit focused on donor health and genomics, a new area of research for NHS Blood and Transplant. ̽��ֱ��Unit will address major questions about the health of blood donors and produce evidence-based strategies to enhance donor safety while ensuring sustainability of blood supply.

̽��ֱ��Units will be based at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, part of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals Partnership, and located within the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the United States.

Professor Bradley said: “Blood and transplantation research is vital to improving the quality, safety and availability of donation and transplantation. These two new NIHR units will play an important role in this area and inform NHS policy and practice in the future. They will further add to and capitalise on continuing growth of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.”

Professor Dame Sally C Davies FRS FMedSci, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health, said: “ ̽��ֱ��NHS and its patients rely on an efficient supply of blood and organ donations and, increasingly, stem cells and genomics. We want researchers to explore how to improve the quality and effectiveness of these donations, therapies and technologies. ̽��ֱ��NIHR Blood and Transplant Research Units will involve NHSBT in partnerships with leading university teams so that we can accelerate and translate advances in research into benefits for donors and patients.”

A third unit is due to open at UCL ( ̽��ֱ�� College London), led by Dr Karl Peggs and focused on Stem Cells and Immunotherapies.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has received £7.9 million from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to fund Blood and Transplant Research Units. Each Unit is a partnership between ̽��ֱ�� researchers and NHS Blood and Transplant, and will begin in October 2015.

Blood and transplantation research is vital to improving the quality, safety and availability of donation and transplantation.

Andrew Bradley

Siringa

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Dementia: what’s needed now?

rw485 — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:48:07 +0000

Mind over matter showcases 12 of Britain’s oldest brain donors who agreed to be photographed and interviewed. Presented by artist Ania Dabrowska and Professor Bronwyn Parry, King’s College London, the event also includes a panel discussion chaired by Carol Brayne, Professor of Public Health Medicine in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Speaking about her involvement in this event, artist Ania Dabrowska said: “ ̽��ֱ��Mind over matter project came out of my longstanding artistic interest in questions of memory, Professor Bronwyn Parry's research on brain banks and body organ donation, and our mutual desire to create work that not only demystifies what happens behind the doors of brain banks to the audiences but also celebrates the role that brain donors play in the search for the cure for dementia.

“ ̽��ֱ��project, funded by Wellcome Trust People Award, proved to be ground-breaking because of the ethical issues it raises about creating art work about people who might be affected by dementia, access to brain banks and unveiling of brain donors' identity, something that was apparently unprecedented. It offered me as an artist rare access to private lives and archives of the donors we worked with as well as an opportunity to learn about the incredible research that goes on in brain banks around the world.

“I believe that the relationship between art and science can be beneficial for both disciplines and for the public, but it is a challenging one as they are routed in disparate traditions, come with sets of conflicting expectations and are governed by different rules of conduct.

“Thanks to the trust between Professor Parry, the donors, their families and myself, our collaborators at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospital’s Brain Bank and Wellcome Trust support, we succeeded in overcoming these challenges, producing a book and a multi-sensory exhibition that gave due space to both of these worlds in an emotionally charged, curatorially experimental, intellectually challenging and scientifically accurate outputs. All of this was only possible because of the willingness of all parties to cross the boundaries of their usual practice and our shared belief in the importance of bringing the subject of dementia to the forefront of public awareness.”

A further event covering the subject of dementia will be held on Sunday 23 March. Dementia: what's needed now? will investigate the state of research into dementia and the commitment of G8 countries to trying to find a cure by 2025. This will be discussed by leading dementia researcher, Professor Carol Brayne with the agency responsible for dementia policy in the UK, Public Health England.

Professor Brayne said: “Dementia continues to hit the press almost if not every day. It is one of the major topics of our time and has attracted policy makers’ attention round the world. ̽��ֱ��announcement of a Dementia Envoy for the recent G8 is a completely new development to assist the international efforts to meet the aspirations set up at this highly successful international forum in December last year. These two events, focused on this topic, cover very different angles of science. ̽��ֱ��first is an arts and science collaboration to celebrate brain donation, which was built upon long standing studies in Cambridge and participants and their families. ̽��ֱ��second will be a reflection on the G8, its outcomes and the way in which our institutional structures are responding to policy developments and how science informs this process.”

̽��ֱ��event, Become a Dementia Friend, which is also on Sunday 23 March, will highlight the need for a helping hand for those suffering with dementia to go about their daily lives and feel included in their local community. Dementia Friends gives people an idea of the small things they can do to make a difference to people living with dementia.

Lucy Lloyd from the Institute of Public Health, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “670,000 people across England are living with dementia. Many people (one in four) with dementia say that shopping and going out can be very stressful and many have given up since being diagnosed. Drop in to one of our Become a Dementia Friend information sessions to learn how to offer a helping hand. By becoming a Dementia Friend you will be able to support people in your community, help shift misconceptions, and help make your local area a more dementia aware community.”

For more information about the Cambridge Science Festival or to book tickets for any of these events, please visit: www.cam.ac.uk/science-festival

Further news stories about the Cambridge Science Festival can be viewed here: www.cam.ac.uk/science-festival/news

You can also follow us on:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Cambridgesciencefestival Twitter: https://twitter.com/camscience

To download the Festival app, please visit: www.cam.ac.uk/csf/app

A remarkable new project that looks at brain donor’s involvement in brain research and the search for cures for dementia will be presented at this year’s Cambridge Science Festival on Friday 21 March.

All of this was only possible because of the willingness of all parties to cross the boundaries of their usual practice and our shared belief in the importance of bringing the subject of dementia to the forefront of public awareness.

Ania Dabrowska, artist

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Who do you think you are?

amb206 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:15:18 +0000

Jiten was 13 years old when his mother told him that he had been conceived with donor sperm. ̽��ֱ��man Jiten had always thought was his father, and had lived with Jiten and his mother until he was five, was not his genetic father. He says: “I remember running downstairs to talk to my step-dad. It was a relief as I really didn’t get on with the man I’d seen as my dad – and I’d always got on brilliantly with my step-dad.”

Families are changing, not just as a result of a breakdown of conventional family structures but also because of advances in assisted reproductive technologies. No-one knows exactly how many children born in the UK each year are conceived using donated sperm, eggs or embryos - but in 2009 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) put the figure at 1,756.

Donation allows many thousands of people experiencing fertility problems to become parents. However, the conception of children through assisted reproductive technologies brings into play a raft of tricky ethical issues, the foremost of which is the question of disclosure.

“Should children be told that they were conceived using donated reproductive tissue? It might seem like a simple question, and the obvious answer for some may be yes, but it’s one that many parents find much harder to cope with in reality than in theory,” says John Appleby, a researcher with the Centre for Family Research, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who is looking at the ethical considerations of disclosure.

“Most parents of donor conceived children face the dilemma of whether, when and how to tell their children about their genetic origins. I say most because, for example in the case of same-sex couples and single parents, the child may well seek answers to obvious questions about their conception though that doesn’t mean that disclosure is an easy task. For many parents, if and when to begin to tell a child that he or she has been conceived with the help of donated tissue is a real dilemma. Every family is different and families are not isolated units but part of wider communities.”

In his research, Appleby, who has a background in philosophy, has focused on the ethical questions that underlie the matter of disclosure, set against the legal and policy landscape in the UK, with a view to creating a framework for discussion.

Legislation took effect on April 1 2005, which allowed anyone conceived with donated tissue after that date to have, at the age of 18, the right to access information about the identity of their donor via records held by the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

Not until 2023 will it begin to be apparent how many donor-conceived young people might seek out identifying information about their donors from the HFEA. If adoption law is any guide, then the numbers will not be insignificant. Jiten, who is 22, says that not having the right to information about his genetic father doesn’t bother him – although he’d be “curious enough to find out” if he could.

As the legislation stands, young people will not know that they have been donor conceived unless they have been told – and only those with this knowledge will have any reason seek access to the information held about their donor. This situation puts the onus firmly on the parents to make the decision about disclosure.

Existing research into the impact of disclosure (or non-disclosure) has looked at the psycho-social well-being of families, comparing families who have and have not told their child that he/she was donor conceived. Studies conducted at the Centre for Family Research have revealed no marked differences between families who had not disclosed to their children by early adolescence and those who had.

“Given these findings, you might ask: ‘What’s the point of telling children?’ But that ignores the risk of them finding out by accident, such as overhearing a conversation, and suffering some kind of harm,” says Appleby.

“As researchers we know of a few cases where children found out as teenagers that they were donor conceived and reported experiencing certain harms such as feeling lied to or deceived. On the other hand, we know of others who did not report any harm on discovering that they were donor conceived. All in all, we still need to gather more empirical evidence before any significant judgements can be made about the impact of disclosure, or non-disclosure, on the well-being of individuals later in life.”

To date, Appleby has concentrated on the ways in which disclosure impacts on the issues of trust and identity, among others. “When I looked at some of the cases in which individuals reported harm from late or accidental disclosure, one of the harms they reported was from losing trust in others,” said Appleby.

“Basically, if their parents had withheld information from them – lied, in fact – they reported experiencing a loss of trust in their parents, and sometimes in other people in their lives as well. In view of this, parents might be advised to opt for an approach which minimised the chance of losing their children’s trust. Trust is very important to young people and loss of trust in an aspect of a relationship can have a knock-on effect on other aspects.”

Television programmes such as the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? and ITV’s Long Lost Family tend to focus on the emotional impact of having to re-think identity in the light of new information about their family backgrounds. As Jiten’s experiences illustrate so vividly, every scenario and every family is different. Identity is an aspect of the human condition that can be fundamental to well-being – but each individual is likely to shape their identity using different points of reference, not all of them related directly to genetic ties.

Jiten says: “My experience is made more complex by the fact that my mum and the man I thought was my dad, as well as my genetic dad, are all Indian. My step-dad is white and I’ve been brought up in a household that blends two cultures. There are certain expectations that go along with being an Indian male and when I was able to separate myself mentally from my first dad, I felt free of these expectations. For me identity is as much to do with culture as genetics. Most importantly, when I was 18 or so, I realised that there was only one person responsible for who I am – and that’s me.”

Each year in the UK over a thousand children are conceived using donor tissue. Many parents find it hard to tell their children that they were donor conceived. Bioethicist John Appleby, from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Family Research, is looking at some of the ethical questions surrounding disclosure.

Trust is very important to young people and loss of trust in an aspect of a relationship can have a knock-on effect on other aspects.

John Appleby

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Research hopes to increase available donor kidneys

bjb42 — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers hope their findings, published today in the journal ̽��ֱ��Lancet, will increase the use of kidneys from cardiac-death donors (kidneys which were previously viewed by some as inferior) and possibly reform how these kidneys are allocated - thereby increasing the fairness of kidney distribution as well as the likelihood of a successful transplant.

There are currently over 7000 patients waiting for a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, because of the dire lack of donation organs, almost 10 per cent of these patients die every year while waiting for a healthy kidney.

Since the 1970s, the majority of recovered organs for transplantations were from 'brain-dead' donors, patients who had suffered massive, irreversible brain injuries and needed artificial life support to stay alive. However, over the last decade there has been a reduction of these types of donors as a result of better care of patients with acute head injuries and fewer deaths from traffic accidents.

Because of the shortfall of organs, doctors have begun to use kidneys from cardiac-death donors - individuals who have suffered devastating and irreversible injuries and who have then suffered from a 'controlled' cardiac arrest (when medical support is gradually removed and the heart stops beating as a result of the injuries sustained). As these types of deaths are much more prevalent, donor organs from these patients are much more readily available.

Unfortunately, although the number of these types of transplants has increased dramatically - since 2000 they have risen from 3 to 32 per cent - there is still reluctance to adopt the use of these kidneys by some transplant specialists because of concerns about the quality of the organs. This new research, however, addresses these concerns, finding that kidneys from cardiac-death donors are of similar quality to those from brain-dead donors.

̽��ֱ��scientists examined data from 9134 kidneys transplants which were conducted in 23 centres; 8289 of the kidneys were donated after brain death and 845 after controlled cardiac death. They found no difference in survival rates or kidney function of recipients for up to five years after transplantation. ( ̽��ֱ��researchers did not have the data to explore the success rates beyond five years but indicate that there is no reason to suspect longer-term transplant outcomes would be different.) ̽��ֱ��scientists did find that some factors decreased the success rate of cardiac-death transplantations: increasing age of donor and recipient, repeat transplantation, and organs kept cold but without blood supply for longer than 12 hours.

Lead author of the paper, Professor Andrew Bradley of the Department of Surgery at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: "Cardiac-death donors represent an extremely important and overlooked source of high-quality donor kidneys and have the potential to increase markedly the number of kidney transplants performed in the UK."

Currently, kidneys donated by 'brain-dead' donors are allocated according to a national points-based system, ensuring equal access to donor kidneys irrespective of geographical location of those on the waiting list. Because of the absence of adequate information regarding kidneys from cardiac-death donors, however, they are instead allocated locally according to the policy of individual transplant centres, an arguably less effective way of distribution as it unlikely to secure the best candidate for receiving the kidney.

Dr Dominic Summers, one of the authors of the paper, added: "What we have shown, for the first time, is that cardiac-death donor kidneys last as long and work as well as brain-death donor kidneys, and should be regarded as comparable. In view of our findings, we recommend that cardiac-death kidneys be allocated in a similar way as brain-death kidneys, ensuring better tissue matches and favouring those who have waited longest.

"Cardiac-death donor kidneys currently make up only a third of deceased donor kidney transplants, but hopefully this paper will provide the evidence and impetus to greatly expand the national programme, and improve the national organ donation rates."

Donor kidneys from individuals who have recently died from cardiac arrest perform just as well in recipients as kidneys from traditional 'brain-dead' donors, scientists have found.

Cardiac-death donors represent an extremely important and overlooked source of high-quality donor kidneys and have the potential to increase markedly the number of kidney transplants performed in the UK.

Professor Andrew Bradley

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