Bone Marrow Transplant to Induce Tolerance in Heart Transplant Recipients - Full Text View

Sponsors and Collaborators:	University of Louisville Jewish Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky Department of Defense
Information provided by:	University of Louisville
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:	NCT00497757

Purpose

At the present time, heart transplant recipients must take anti-rejection medication to prevent rejection of the donated heart. Even with this medication, chronic rejection is the most common cause of late graft loss. The anti-rejection agents themselves are significantly toxic, with side effects including kidney damage, infection and an increased incidence of cancer. The goal of this study is to allow the patient to develop “tolerance” to the transplanted heart while maintaining a competent immune system. Tolerance enables the transplant recipient’s body to recognize the transplanted organ as self rather than foreign tissue. The recipient will not try to reject the donor heart and the need for anti-rejection medication could be dramatically decreased or eliminated entirely. To accomplish this, patients in this study will receive specially treated bone marrow taken from their heart donor. Bone marrow transplant has been shown in animal studies and in humans to induce tolerance following organ transplant.

Two factors limit the application of donor marrow transplant to induce tolerance: 1) preparing the patient for transplant (conditioning); and 2) graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Traditional conditioning destroys the recipient's immune system and requires that the marrow transplant be successful because the patient is unable to fight off infection if the donor cells do not survive. GVHD occurs when donor immune cells recognize the recipient’s cells as foreign tissue and attack them. Severe GVHD can result in death. This study utilizes a new approach to conditioning which leaves the patient's immune system intact. The transplant product is depleted of GVHD-producing cells but retains tolerance-promoting facilitating cells, which are intended to ensure the donor and recipient cells coexists peacefully, a state called mixed chimerism. The toxicity of conditioning and transplantation is significantly reduced.

In this study, we will determine the appropriate cell dose to safely establish mixed chimerism following partial conditioning in heart transplant recipients. The study takes a gradual approach to increasing the cell dose to achieve mixed chimerism. We believe this study will provide a breakthrough in the approach to heart transplantation. Our goal is to evaluate the potential of safely establishing mixed chimerism to induce tolerance following heart transplant and reduce or eliminate the need for anti-rejection therapy.

Condition	Intervention	Phase
Cardiac Transplant Recipients	Procedure: Stem cell transplant	Phase I Phase II

MedlinePlus related topics: Bone Marrow Transplantation Heart Transplantation

U.S. FDA Resources

Study Type:	Interventional
Study Design:	Treatment, Non-Randomized, Open Label, Uncontrolled, Single Group Assignment, Safety/Efficacy Study
Official Title:	Induction of Donor Specific Tolerance in Recipients of Cardiac Allografts by Donor Bone Marrow Cell Infusion

Further study details as provided by University of Louisville:

Primary Outcome Measures:

Bone marrow engraftment/chimerism

Secondary Outcome Measures:

Tolerance induction

Estimated Enrollment:

30

Eligibility

Ages Eligible for Study:	18 Years to 70 Years
Genders Eligible for Study:	Both
Accepts Healthy Volunteers:	No

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

Subject must be between the ages of 18 and 70 years and meet the institution’s criteria for cardiac transplantation.
Subjects must have acceptable negative results for infectious disease markers done within two weeks of the bone marrow infusion.
Subject is receiving a first cardiac transplant.
Subjects receiving a multi-organ transplant (i.e., heart/kidney) may be included at the discretion of the PI and investigators.

Note: These multi-organ subjects will have identical criteria with the exception of adequate function of the affected organ to be transplanted (i.e., kidney). They are included in the total of thirty subjects to be transplanted.

Subject’s panel reactive antibody (PRA) is <40. If the patient is plasmapheresed prior to the heart transplant, then the pre-transplant PRA will not be a consideration for inclusion/exclusion.
Subject must have a negative crossmatch with the donor.
Women who are of child bearing potential must have a negative pregnancy test (urine test within 48 hours) before TBI and agree to use reliable contraception for one year following transplant.
Subject is able to give informed consent.

Exclusion Criteria:

Clinically active bacterial, fungal, viral or parasitic infection
Pregnancy
Previous radiation therapy at a dose that would preclude TBI
Subject is unable to give informed consent
If the procedures associated with the study (i.e., delivering TBI) would significantly extend the cold ischemia time of the heart, the protocol will be abandoned and the patient will receive a conventional heart transplant.

Contacts and Locations

Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00497757

Locations

United States, Kentucky
Jewish Hospital and Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, University of Louisville	Recruiting
Louisville, Kentucky, United States, 40202
Contact: Suzanne T Ildstad, MD 502-852-2080
Principal Investigator: Robert Dowling, M.D.

Sponsors and Collaborators

University of Louisville

Jewish Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky

Department of Defense

Investigators

Study Director:	Suzanne T Ildstad, M.D.	Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, University of Louisville
Principal Investigator:	Robert Dowling, M.D.	Jewish Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky

More Information

Study ID Numbers:	20031100, 443-98 (UofL ID)
Study First Received:	July 6, 2007
Last Updated:	July 6, 2007
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:	NCT00497757
Health Authority:	United States: Food and Drug Administration

ClinicalTrials.gov processed this record on January 16, 2009