With more than 100,000 people currently waiting for a life-saving transplant, expanding the donor pool is an imperative. Dr. Christine Durand and our TRC team lead HOPE in Action, a multi-site NIH-funded trial, bringing HOPE to every community and studying the long-term safety and feasibility of HIV-HIV organ donation and transplantation.

Alcoholic Liver Disease (ALD) is the leading indication for a liver transplant in the U.S. Among individuals suffering from ALD, there is a subset of patients with Severe Alcoholic Hepatitis (SAH), which has a fast onset and mortality rate of 70-80% within the first few months if refractory to medications. Historically, most transplant centers required 6-months of abstinence from alcohol prior to proceeding with liver transplant. Many individuals died before transplant was offered.  The NIH funded DELTA Center is a multidisciplinary clinical and research effort focused on providing early liver transplantation to individuals with SAH and less than 6-months abstinence. The objectives of this study are to define outcomes, best practices, and an ethical framework for this practice.

COVID-19 Antibody Testing of Recipients of Solid Organ Transplants is being led by the transplant team at Johns Hopkins. The study has been approved by the Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board (IRB00248540). The purpose of this research study is to determine COVID-19 antibody levels in transplant recipients who get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Expanding the donor pool through the use of organs from donors with hepatitis C virus for recipients without hepatitis C (HCV D+/R-) has become more common in recent years due to the discovery of an effective cure for hepatitis C. The PREVENT HCV study, a multi-site NIH-funded randomized controlled trial, aims to find out which is better in HCV D+/R- kidney transplants: taking a shorter course of the HCV medication that starts prior to transplant, or taking a full course of treatment that starts after treatment.