Your stories

Shiloh’s story: helping us to understand the immune system after heart transplantation

Patients undergoing heart transplantation require life-long monitoring for rejection. Currently, prevention of rejection is guided by invasive and expensive heart biopsies. We have previously developed a genetic test for determining early rejection with approximately 80% accuracy, and identified genetic markers of immune cells that are involved in rejection. With the help of research participants like Shiloh we are able to investigate how these immune cells in patient blood samples. The ultimate aim is to create a clinically applicable, non-invasive test for diagnosing transplant rejection.

Thank you to the Foundation for Children for supporting this vital research, and to SIRAP for producing the film.