News Archive

• 3 Abstracts were presented at the British Transplantation Society meeting in April
  • Russell NK, Morris PJ Calcineurin Inhibitor Free Immunosuppression Improves Kidney Graft Function but at the expense of increased acute rejection. A Meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials
  • Russell NK, Morris PJ The use of Calcineurin Inhibitor Withdrawal Protocols Results in Improved Graft function but an increase in Acute Rejection Rates. A Meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials
  • Knight S, Morris PJ. Steroid withdrawal following renal transplantation increases the risk of acute rejection but improves cardio vascular risk factors: a meta analysis
• Peter Morris gave a plenary lecture at the end of the TTS congress "Clinical Highlights of the Congress".
• Three papers were presented at the TTS congress in Sydney:
  • Pengel L, Barcena L, Morris PJ. "Quality of reporting of randomized controlled trials in solid organ transplantation."
  • Knight S, Barcena L, Morris PJ. "Early Steroid Withdrawal Following Renal Transplantation Increases The Risk Of Acute Rejection: A Meta-analysis"
  • Knight S, Russell N, Barcena L, Morris PJ. "Does Mycophenolate Mofetil Confer Clinical Benefit Over Azathioprine In Renal Transplantation? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis."
• The electronic transplant library of randomised controlled trials in organ transplantation went live at the end of January.
• Sir Peter Morris served as the Dunphy Visiting Professor at the University of California, San Francisco in April 2008.
• European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT): an agreement between the CET and ESOT has been signed in which the CET will act as a knowledge centre for ESOT, helping in the design and reporting of RCT’s in Europe.
• The 6th edition of the Kidney Transplantation : Principles and Practice was published in June 2008.
• Simon Knight presented a paper entitled "Does Mycophenolate Mofetil confer clinical benefit over Azathioprine in renal transplantation? A systematic review and meta-analysis.", and displayed a poster entitled "Does the evidence support the use of mycophenolate mofetil therapeutic drug monitoring in clinical practice? A systematic review." at the British Transplantation Society in Glasgow in April, 2008.
• Sir Peter Morris gave the introductory plenary lecture at the recent ESOT congress in Prague entitled "Successes and Failures in Organ Transplantation".
• Leticia Barcena presented a poster at the same ESOT congress: "The Transplant Library, simplified searching for Level 1 evidence in Transplantation".
• The latest Registry of Randomised Controlled Trials was published in Transplantation in the October 27 issue.
• Three abstracts were accepted for oral presentation at the 10th Annual Congress of the British Transplantation Society that took place in March:
  • Does The Use Of MMF To Enable Calcineurin Inhibitor Reduction Or Withdrawal Result In Better Kidney Graft Function? A Meta-analysis Russell, N.K., Bradley, J.A. and Morris, P.J.
  • An Electronic Transplant Library (TL) Of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) In Organ Transplantation Simplifies Searching For Level 1 Evidence. Ms L Barcena and Prof. Sir P J Morris
  • Does cyclosporine C2 monitoring confer clinical benefit when compared with conventional trough level monitoring? A systematic review. Knight SR and Morris PJ.
• The latest Registry of Randomized Controlled Trials was published in the journal Transplantation on 27 November, 2006.
• The second report of the Working Party on Facial Transplantation was published in November 2006.  The Working Party reviewed technical, immunological, ethical, psychological and legal aspects of facial transplantation and specified 15 requirements that should all be satisfied before a facial transplantation is carried out.
• Sir Peter Morris has been awarded the Maharshi Sushruta Award of the Institute of Kidney Diseases and Transplantation Sciences in Ahmedabad, and the Hamilton Fairly medal of the Royal College of Physicians of London.
• The World Transplant Congress was held in Boston from July 22-27. This was a joint meeting between The Transplantation Society (TTS), the American Society of Transplantation (AST) and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS). The Congress was attended by 6500 delegates as well as spouses and exhibitors. It was superbly hosted by the Congress Chairman and President of the ASTS, Dr Ben Cosimi, and the Presidents of the two other societies, Professor Kathryn Wood (TTS) and Dr Richard Fine (AST).
  
  The amount of information presented was almost overwhelming and everyone was faced with deciding which one out of many sessions they should attend. We were very pleased with the reception of Transplant Library which was promoted in the exhibition hall. The paper presented by the CET was well received although it caused a certain amount of dismay among the audience. Sir Peter Morris was awarded with the Medawar Prize of the TTS as well as the ASTS-Roche Pioneer Award.
• Our longstanding PA Rosie Smith has left for an exciting job in the city but we have been joined by the highly skilled Nishanthi Talawila.
• The World Health Organisation announced the development of a website that provides guidelines for registries of clinical trials. The aim is to bring the different trial registries together in one single platform. For more information visit: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr25/en/index.html
• The Centre will present the following abstract at the World Transplant Congress held July 22-27, Boston:
  'The quality of randomized trials in organ transplantation must be improved'
  The abstract will be presented Thursday 27 July at 12:00pm.
• A new research fellow, Simon Knight, from Oxford will join the Centre at the beginning of June.
• Sir Peter Morris was the guest lecturer at the 39th Janpanese Society for Clinical Renal Transplantation on 24-28 January 2006. He gave two lectures 'A History of Transplantation' and ' The Quality of Evidence in Organ Transplantation'.
• The third registry of randomised controlled trials in transplantation will be published in the journal Transplantation on 27 April 2006.
• "The first Registry of randomised controlled trials was published in the journal Transplantation on 27 August 2005."
• "The second Registry of randomised controlled trials was published in the journal Transplantation on 15 December 2005."