Clinical Trials Spotlight - MEDEOR

Phase 3 MEDEOR Trial Looking to Prevent Transplant Rejection

The Acute, Critical Care, Surgery, & Transplant CTSU is currently supporting the MEDEOR MDR-101-MLK trial. Led by Principal Investigator, Randall Sung, MD – Department of Surgery, MEDEOR is a multi-center, phase 3 trial assessing the efficacy and safety of cellular immunotherapy with MDR-101 for induction of immune tolerance in recipients of HLA matched, living donor kidney transplant.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases, of the more than 20 million Americans with chronic kidney disease, more than 870,000 are treated for end-stage kidney disease each year. In persons with end-stage kidney disease, receiving a kidney transplant is the more effective means of restoring normal biological kidney function. 

Currently, patients receiving a transplanted kidney are required to take life-long immunosuppressive medications to prevent rejection of the transplanted kidney. These medications carry substantial side effects. In addition, these medicines often do not completely control damage to the kidney from the recipient's immune system, ultimately causing the kidney to fail. MEDEOR Therapeutics is developing a novel cell-based therapy to reprogram the recipients' immune system to accept a transplanted kidney without the need for long-term use of immunosuppression drugs. Transplanting a specialized subset of donor immune cells appears to induce immune unresponsiveness to the transplanted kidney. 

According to Dr. Sung, “This protocol will permit highly matched living donor kidney transplant recipients to successfully maintain their transplant without having to take immunosuppression to prevent rejection. This protocol may also be the basis of future efforts to expand cellular therapies to reduce dependence on immunosuppression for a wider range of transplant recipients.”

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