Funding outcome

When children are born with heart disease, sometimes surgery is required at a very young age. During heart surgeries, an organ in the chest called the thymus is removed so that the surgeon can access the heart. The thymus is important in the maturation and development of a type of immune cells called T cells. At birth, humans have T cells that have already developed but new T cells are produced in the thymus until they are much older. Previous studies to look at how thymus removal changes the immune system in children showed differences in patients with and without a thymus, but there were conflicting reports regarding whether or not there is an impact on children 's health. Some studies show increased risk of poor immune function and development of allergies and autoimmune disease while others do not. Additionally, these studies have generally only looked at small numbers of patients. We now have an unparalleled opportunity to collaborate with an ongoing surgical research project to look at the immune system of a large number of young patients undergoing heart surgeries at the Stollery Children's Hospital. Over the coming two years we will study the question of whether removing the thymus in this special group of young patients changes their immune system. Our goal is to have a better understanding of the immune system in young heart surgery patients and to create a database that will allow the long-term follow up of this large patient group. This study is a rare opportunity to study a unique pediatric population, allowing us to develop strategies for better outcomes for their health and well-being. The work that we will do over this summer will look at the types of T cells and other immune cells that these children have before their thymus is removed, establishing an important baseline to compare to samples after thymus removal. The results from this study will allow us to create a control group dataset to use in many studies moving forward.