The medicine behind organ transplantation

The Project

In this project, you will have a unique experience facing current challenges and opportunities in kidney transplantation. Transplant science is a successfull model of translational medicine gathering basic and clinical researchers. In a very practical way, you will be first provided with the clues of transplant success by a team of experts. You will know about all critical steps in the transplant process, from organ procurement and robotic surgery to modern immunosuppression. Then, you will be introduced to the new concepts and methodologies we are working on in our laboratory. You will see new tools for monitoring the immune response and perform some experiments with renal progenitor cells. By this background, you will have some hints to generate your hypothesis to be tested in future studies.

During this project, you will feel either as a true and passionate surgeon or physician seeking the way to achieve the holy grail of long-term transplant survival.

Do you accept the challenge?

Matching profiles

Health sciences, biomedicine, biology, chemistry

Learning objectives
  • To understand the consequences of chronic kidney failure and why a kidney transplantation is the best option.
  • To know about the importance of kidney donation and major surgical advances in kidney transplantation.
  • To learn on the mechanism of rejection, management of immunosuppression and kidney regeneration.
Required materials

Laptop 

Coordinators of the project

Josep Maria Cruzado

  • Chief of the Department of Nephrology and Renal Transplantation at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge and Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Barcelona.
  • President of the Catalan Society of Nephrology and Associate Editor in the American Journal of Transplantation and Clinical Kidney Journal.
  • Awarded the Fundación Renal Ínigo Álvarez de Toledo Prize for Clinical Investigation in 2013 and 2017.
  • Research interests focus on renal transplantation, kidney regeneration and diabetic kidney disease.

Francesc Vigués

  • Chief of the Department of Urology at the Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge and Associate Professor of Urology at University of Barcelona.
  • Head of the surgical Kidney transplant program at the Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge since 2016.
  • Work focused in the surgical aspects of transplantation, especially in the minimally invasive surgery field.
  • Initialization in the laparoscopic nephrectomy for the live donor transplantation at the Bellvitge Hospital and, recently, the robot kidney transplantation program.
  • Member of the European Association of Urology (EAU) Robotic Urology Section (ERUS) and the Robotic Assisted Kidney Transplantation Group.
Associated researchers

Núria Lloberas

  • Researcher in the Nephrology and Renal Transplantation group at IDIBELL.
  • Broad background in pharmacology, with specific training and expertise in pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenomics and population pharmacokinetics studies to optimize the administration of immunosuppression in kidney transplant recipients.

Anna Solà

  • Associated Researcher in the Nephrology and Renal Transplantation Group (IDIBELL-Hospital de Bellvitge).
  • Co-foundator of a biotechnological spin-off, focused on cell therapy in regenerative medicine obtaining in 2017 the approval of the AEM for the Phase II Clinical Trial of the company's first product.
  • Different international and national collaborations and actively participate in the European Commission in evaluations associated with the Marie Curie system since 2011.

Oriol Bestard

  • Head of the Kidney transplant program at Bellvitge University Hospital, Associate Professor at Barcelona University and member of the council of the European Society of Organ Transplantation.
  • Research mainly focusing in the investigation of mechanisms of allograft rejection and opportunistic viral infections as well as in the development of novel non-invasive immune tools/biomarkers for immunosuppression individualization.
  • Professional of Excellence award by the Association Board of Physicians of Barcelona.
  • Associate editor of Transplantation journal and Frontiers Medicine.
The center

Bellvitge University Hospital (HUB)

Bellivitge Hospital University (HUB) was opened in 1972 and is located in the city of Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) and belongs to the Catalan Health Institute (ICS). The HUB is one of the only five hospitals in all Catalonia certified as third level center, allowing to treat high level complexity cases, and is of reference to more than 2 million of people.

More about the center