Funding outcome

Women and children have historically faced shortages in heart donors for transplantation, making up only 25% (DeFilippis et al., 2023) and 14% (Schweiger et al., 2015) of heart transplant recipients, respectively. Women are more likely to develop immune defenses against transplant organs due to changes that occur in the body during pregnancy, which greatly limits how they can receive safe transplants. Children face a shortage of small pediatric hearts which come from other children. A method that could reduce shortage is ABO blood-group incompatible heart transplants. Body tissues like the heart contain blood-group markers A, B, AB, or O. Most heart transplants must be ABO-compatible to prevent rejection. Type B and O women and children face further disparity in access to safe heart transplantation due to a shortage of compatible donors. The West Lab and collaborators have shown that treatment of type A tissue with special 'Azymes' are able to modify the blood group A markers and change the tissue to type O, which is considered the universal donor. Type A human donor lung and kidney were shown to be changed to type O following treatment with Azymes on special machines outside the body. This project will examine whether Azymes can also change A hearts to O by the methods needed to perfuse a heart outside the body, which is different than lung and kidney. Type A human hearts unsuitable for transplant will be perfused with Azyme solution. We hypothesize that this treatment will convert hearts from type A to O. We will confirm whether the treatment succeeded by staining the heart tissue for specific blood group markers and analyzing the results under microscope. This project is an important step towards the clinical use of Azymes to create blood group O hearts. Successful application could greatly increase access to safe heart transplantation and help alleviate the transplant disparity for women and children, allowing them to live longer and healthier lives.