According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), there are approximately 100,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant. Physicians focused in transplant medicine must contend with the repercussions of the suppressed immune systems of patients undergoing transplant, including organ failure and rejection, a variety of opportunistic infections, and other transplant complications. Among the important complement-related complications following kidney transplant are Antibody-Mediated Rejection (AMR) and Delayed Graft Function (DGF).
Many patients will never have access to life saving organ transplants because they have antibodies in their system against any potential donors. Donor specific antibodies (DSA) couple with the body’s immune proteins, also known as complement, to destroy the transplanted organ in a process called Antibody Mediated Rejection (AMR). Another important problem in transplantation is the damage that occurs as a result of organ preservation, and the time it takes to remove and then transplant a deceased donor organ. This damage is called ischemia-reperfusion injury, or delayed graft function (DGF) in kidney transplantation.
ViroPharma is assessing the utility of C1 esterase inhibitor in AMR and DGF - not only to assess its utility in these indications, but also to examine the potential of complement inhibition to address a variety of other similar complement-mediated diseases.