Immune response to pancreas transplant
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating the immune response in pancreas transplantation alone compared to pancreas and sentinel skin flap transplantation combined.
IRAS ID
292049
Contact name
Helen L Stark
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford/Clinical Trials and Research Governance
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Our group in Oxford have been studying the use of vascularised sentinel skin flaps (SSFs) to detect rejection in pancreas transplantation (15/SW/0333). As we begin to analyse the data collected from this trial, it has been noted that there have been fewer rejection episodes than we would expect from the published data on pancreas or skin transplants alone. It appears there may be a beneficial effect of adding skin transplants to the pancreas transplant, but at present we do not understand the mechanism underlying this observation. In order to investigate this further we would like to compare blood samples from patients who have a pancreas transplant alone, with the samples we have already collected from the patients with a combined SSF and pancreas transplant, to try and identify differences in the immune responses in these patients. We plan to continue analysis of existing skin and blood samples from the combined SSF and pancreas group. We will also recruit 15 patients who are having their transplant in Oxford and follow them up for a year. We hope that by understanding the differences in immune response in these patients we may identify important pathways that are responsible either for rejection(bad for transplants) or tolerance (good for transplants). This information will then guide future research in transplantation.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/EE/0213
Date of REC Opinion
2 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion