Rosetta Genomics has entered into a joint venture agreement with an Israeli hospital to develop a molecular test that would assess the potential of organ rejection in newly transplanted kidneys. The New Jersey-based Rosetta struck the deal with the Clalit Health Services’ Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikvah, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The deal includes partial funding of the research by Rosetta, which will retain worldwide rights to distribute any test that is developed as a result of the collaboration. Patents would be held jointly by Rosetta and a private company affiliated with Clalit Health. About 14,000 kidney transplants take place in the United States every year, with many of the patients requiring drugs to suppress their immune systems in order for the new organs to function properly. There is currently no reliable way to detect a potential donor rejection prior to a transplantation. Although there is no specific data on organ rejection per patient available, the 10-year survival rate for a kidney transplant recipient in 2009 was about 45 percent, according to data from the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse, an affiliate of the National Institutes of Health. Although that is up significantly from […]
Rosetta Genomics has entered into a joint venture agreement with an Israeli hospital to develop a molecular test that would assess the potential of organ rejection in newly transplanted kidneys.
The New Jersey-based Rosetta struck the deal with the Clalit Health Services’ Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikvah, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The deal includes partial funding of the research by Rosetta, which will retain worldwide rights to distribute any test that is developed as a result of the collaboration. Patents would be held jointly by Rosetta and a private company affiliated with Clalit Health.
About 14,000 kidney transplants take place in the United States every year, with many of the patients requiring drugs to suppress their immune systems in order for the new organs to function properly. There is currently no reliable way to detect a potential donor rejection prior to a transplantation.
Although there is no specific data on organ rejection per patient available, the 10-year survival rate for a kidney transplant recipient in 2009 was about 45 percent, according to data from the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse, an affiliate of the National Institutes of Health. Although that is up significantly from the 25 percent survival rates of the 1980s, the number has increased little in the past 20 years.
Recent research has suggested that rejection can be traced by matching certain blood protein levels in both the donor and the recipient through microRNA assays, which is a specialty of Rosetta’s.
“Despite an improvement in kidney transplant survival in the early post-transplantation stage, there still remains the need for a sensitive, etiology-specific and noninvasive method for monitoring the function of the renal allograft in the late post-transplantation period, where chronic rejection is an almost universal finding,” said Alexander Yussim, M.D., a transplant immunology researcher from Beilinson’s transplant department. “The noninvasive test we would like to develop could have potential to enable diagnosis at an earlier stage when this information could alter the choice of therapy and, ultimately, improve outcomes.”
Takeaway: Researchers from Rosetta Genomics and an Israeli hospital are working on a molecular test to determine the likelihood that a donated kidney will be rejected.
