We are offering a project within the new Ex Vivo Organ Perfusion Laboratory at the Transplantation Institute, University of Chicago.

Recent technological advances now allow a procured organ to be perfused ex vivo prior to transplantation in an effort to make the organ more suitable for transplantation. Experimental models and clinical trials have demonstrated that normothermic perfusion abrogates ischemia-reperfusion injury following conventional cold storage. As a result, normothermic machine perfusion potentially increases the pool of available organs by allowing the use of marginal donor organs.

The ability to maintain an organ at normothermic temperatures ex vivo, prior to transplantation, provides a unique opportunity to modulate the donor organ. We are investigating methods to modulate transplant lungs and livers while they are maintained ex vivo under normothermic conditions, to reduce the burden of immunosuppression required by the recipient following transplantation.

We are looking for a bright energetic student that is interested in transplant biology. The student will work under the close supervision and mentorship of members of the surgical faculty and the surgical research fellows. The time spent in the laboratory would be designed to achieve the goals of the summer research project and establish long-term mentorship of a student interested in transplant biology and/or surgery.

1) To characterize the phenotype of passenger leukocyte efflux migrating out of livers maintained on a normothermic perfusion circuit.

We are combining concepts and skills from surgery, engineering and immunology. Specific skills that the student will lean will include management of organs on ex vivo normothermic circuits, flow cytometry, mixed lymphocyte reaction, data analysis and presentation.

weekly lab meetings, monthly lab presentation, journal club,