Donor kidneys revitalized for transplant at Toronto General Hospital
Special machine keeps donor kidney preserved and healthy, which could make more transplants possible
The idea is can we make better organs? Can we actually end up transplanting an organ that is better than the way that we found it?’
– Dr. Shaf Keshavjee
That’s only a start.
The researchers are working on using gene and stem cell therapies to help donor organs further repair themselves using the outside-the-body technique and to make them less subject to rejection by molecularly tweaking them for individual recipients.
In the future, almost all organs could end up on support systems to keep them healthy until transplant and prepare them in a personalized way for each patient, Keshavjee predicted.
“We’re developing a machine that will allow us to do 10 lungs at a time instead of one, and I think it will be the same for kidney and liver, and we’re working on that,” he said.
He also envisions donor lungs, hearts, kidneys and livers being processed in organ repair centres, which would then transport them to “the right patient at the right time.”
“I don’t think we’ll be sending every organ in a Lear jet like we do today. I think we’ll send organs by drones.”
In the distant future, there may even come a time when people won’t need organ transplants.
In 2008, Drs. Shaf Keshavjee and Marcelo Cypel of Toronto General Hospital were the first in the world to pioneer the ex-vivo technique to help repair damaged donor lungs.
As a result, there’s been a major increase in lung transplants at the hospital since 2012, and similar systems are now used worldwide. TGH alone has performed 308 lung transplants with ex-vivo-enhanced organs.
Source: The Canadian Press / CBC News / Sheryl Ubelacker / Feb 05, 2018
Ismailimail 
The best news i’ve heard Dr. Keshavjee. Today so many people are waiting for kidney, liver etc donations and suffering till they get a match and i pray you will very soon resolve this problem so people can live without pain and happily. Best wishes for and your teams success to end this pain and start the new plan as stated. God Bless.
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The structure of this story is music to my ears because I heard it repeated at the Toronto Mulaqat in November 2017: There are 4 parts to it:
1)The discovery of new knowledge at the loftiest level of rational intellect(the invention and discovery of the ex-vivo or out of body technique to repair damaged donor lungs);
2)Generously sharing this new knowledge with all countries of the world(surgical residents and medical researchers travelling from all over the world to learn the new technique for lungs and do more research at the Toronto General Hospital);
3)Broadening the discovery of new knowledge to include all other donor organs such as kidneys, liver, heart, etc(more human rational intellect on the rampage!);
4)Sharing again the even newer knowledge with everyone all around the world(and using the discovery of new knowledge for the benefit of all humanity).
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Upcoming Lecture on Double Lung Transplantation by Professor Shaf Keshavjee at the Ismaili Center Toronto on February 21st 2018:
http://iicanada.org/ICT/2018Feb21_ShafKeshavjee
Relevant excerpts from speeches, interviews, newspaper articles, irshads on the subject of the discovery and sharing of new knowledge for the benefit of all humanity:
“A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God’s creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations”(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique).
“Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator’s physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength”(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)
“The Holy Qu’ran’s encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man’s intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, “Whatever I know, he sees”. To which Abu Said replied,” Whatever I see, he knows”.”(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)
“Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity”(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)
“One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer”(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know.”(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)
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