For years, receiving a kidney transplant required a matching donor blood type. This was crucial to ensure that the transplanted kidney was not immediately rejected by the recipient’s body. A blood type A recipient, for instance, would reject an organ from a blood type b donor, so a type A recipient would need to wait for either an A-type donor or an O-type donor, O being universally accepted by other blood types.

In groundbreaking research, scientists from the United Kingdom have discovered how to alter blood types in deceased donor kidneys. Learn more about what they did, who it may benefit, and what the future holds. 

What did researchers do?

Professor Mike Nicholson and Ph.D. student Serena MacMillian from the University of Cambridge used a normothermic perfusion machine—that pumps oxygenated blood through a human deceased kidney (or liver) to help preserve it—to infuse a kidney with chemically-altered blood that changed the kidney’s blood type to the universal type O. 

Who could benefit most from this discovery?

With the demand for kidney transplants so high, there are simply not enough kidneys to go around. Moreover, Black and minority ethnic patients make up 33% of the kidney transplant waiting list and often wait a year longer for a transplant than Caucasian patients. 

Ethnic minority patients are more likely to have B-type blood making them less likely to be a match for the majority of donated kidneys, as A and B are rarer types. Between 2020 and 2021, Black and ethnic minorities in the U.K. accounted for only about 9% of total organ donations, making Nicholson and MacMillan’s discovery potentially life-saving for many more patients. 

Dr. Aislin McMahon, executive director of research at Kidney Research United Kingdom, says, “We know that people from minority ethnic groups can wait much longer for a transplant as they are less likely to be a blood-type match with the organs available. This research offers a glimmer of hope to over 1,000 people [in the United Kingdom] from minority ethnic groups who are waiting for a kidney.”

What is next?

Going forward, the Cambridge team needs to perform more research to see how the newly changed O-type kidney will perform with a patient’s normal blood supply in the rest of their body. If successful, the team will determine how to apply their research to a clinical setting with real patients. 

With this groundbreaking discovery funded by Kidney Research UK, the entire team is hopeful for the future. “As an organization,” McMahon adds,” we are committed to funding research that transforms treatments and tackles health inequalities.”

*Cambridge researchers change donor kidney blood type. (2022, August 15). University of Cambridge. Retrieved September 25, 2022, from https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/kidneybloodtype