Since the 1960s, cold stor­age emerged as the pre­ferred method for or­gan preser­va­tion for trans­plan­ta­tion, but it didn’t tick all the box­es — lim­i­ta­tions such as the risk of ear­ly graft dys­func­tion still con­tribute to chron­ic com­pli­ca­tions. So an up­grade was in or­der. In­stead of flush­ing and pre­serv­ing the pro­cured or­gan at rough­ly freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, new tech­nol­o­gy ac­tu­al­ly keeps the or­gans warm and toasty for trans­plan­ta­tion in a bid to im­prove or­gan ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and im­prove trans­plan­ta­tion out­comes.

The tech­nol­o­gy, pi­o­neered by An­dover, Mass­a­chu­setts-based Trans­Medics, ap­proved for use by the FDA for lung preser­va­tion, is un­der reg­u­la­to­ry re­view for the heart — and is be­ing test­ed for the liv­er. On Tues­day, the de­vel­op­er un­veiled late-stage da­ta that showed its prod­uct, called the Or­gan Care Sys­tem (OCS) Sys­tem, low­ered the in­ci­dence of ear­ly al­lo­graft dys­func­tion (EAD) — an ini­tial poor func­tion of the trans­plant­ed liv­er that typ­i­cal­ly por­tends poor al­lo­graft and pa­tient sur­vival.

The 300-pa­tient tri­al, chris­tened PRO­TECT, as­sessed the im­pact of the OCS sys­tem on pre­serv­ing and as­sess­ing donor liv­ers in­tend­ed for trans­plan­ta­tion — 153 pa­tients were trans­plant­ed with the OCS Liv­er and 147 pa­tients were on the con­trol group, which em­ployed cold stor­age meth­ods.

The pri­ma­ry ef­fec­tive­ness end­point was the in­ci­dence of EAD in the first 7 days fol­low­ing trans­plant pro­ce­dures, and that was met: 17.3% for OCS ver­sus 30.5% for con­trol (p=0.009). The main safe­ty goal, the av­er­age num­ber of liv­er graft-re­lat­ed se­ri­ous ad­verse events per pa­tient mea­sured over 30 days fol­low­ing trans­plan­ta­tion, was al­so achieved 0.046 for the OCS group, com­pared to 0.075 in the con­trol arm (p<0.0001).

Sec­ondary ef­fi­ca­cy end­points, in­clud­ing a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er in­ci­dence of is­chemic cholan­giopa­thy com­pli­ca­tions at 6 months post-trans­plan­ta­tion, were al­so met.

Mal­colm Mac­Con­mara UT South­west­ern

“To our knowl­edge, these re­sults from the OCS Liv­er PRO­TECT tri­al rep­re­sent the first time a new tech­nol­o­gy or ther­a­py has had a pos­i­tive im­pact on both EAD and is­chemic cholan­giopa­thy in liv­er trans­plan­ta­tion,” said Mal­colm Mac­Con­mara, the tri­al’s co-in­ves­ti­ga­tor and di­rec­tor of the or­gan re­search lab at UT South­west­ern Med­ical Cen­ter. “If ap­proved, this would safe­ly ex­pand the uti­liza­tion of donor liv­ers and sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease the num­ber of liv­ers avail­able for life-sav­ing trans­plan­ta­tion.”

For now, the OCS sys­tem is ap­proved for lung preser­va­tion — it is de­signed to re­duce the time dur­ing which the lungs lack blood and oxy­gen sup­port out­side of the body. It in­cludes a portable en­clo­sure with me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal com­po­nents used to warm, ven­ti­late and per­fuse the lungs — as well as a lung preser­va­tion so­lu­tion com­bined with packed red blood cells. The trans­plant team can al­so mon­i­tor and as­sess the donor lungs while they are be­ing per­fused be­fore trans­plan­ta­tion.

Ini­tial­ly it was sanc­tioned for use in on­ly stan­dard-cri­te­ria donor lungs, but last year the FDA ex­pand­ed its use in donor lung pairs ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered un­ac­cept­able for trans­plan­ta­tion based on lim­i­ta­tions of cold stor­age preser­va­tion, for ex­am­ple for pa­tients that are ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tant.

The European Medicines Agency on Friday rejected Kyowa Kirin’s Parkinson’s disease drug Nouryant (istradefylline), which the US FDA approved in 2019 under the brand name Nourianz.

EMA said it considered that the results of the clinical studies used to support the application “were inconsistent and did not satisfactorily show that Nouryant was effective at reducing the ‘off’ time. Only four out of the eight studies showed a reduction in ‘off’ time, and the effect did not increase with an increased dose of Nouryant.”