NYU Langone has assembled a team dedicated to cutting-edge research, to reinforce and energize the Transplant Institute’s commitment to world-class care. Dr. Kon, who comes to NYU Langone from the University of Maryland Medical Center, brings significant research experience in ex vivo lung perfusion.
NYU Langone has assembled a team dedicated to cutting-edge research, to reinforce and energize the Transplant Institute’s commitment to world-class care. Dr. Kon, who comes to NYU Langone from the University of Maryland Medical Center, brings significant research experience in ex vivo lung perfusion. The ex vivo process improves the quality of lungs otherwise deemed unsuitable for transplant by maintaining and evaluating donor lungs outside the body for several hours, treating them with a solution of nutrients and oxygen to reverse lung injury. This enhances the donor lungs’ transplant viability, significantly increasing the number of lungs available for the more than 1,600 people now on the national waiting list.
One of lung transplantation’s most pressing challenges is how to both predict outcomes post-lung transplantation and identify those patients at heightened risk for chronic lung rejection as early as possible, to maximize the potential for intervention and to prevent declining lung function. Dr. Angel—who joined NYU Langone in January 2017 from the University Transplant Center of San Antonio—and his team have partnered with 18 transplant centers across the country to develop strategies to address this challenge. Researchers in this collaboration hope to identify the risk factors associated with acute rejection or early chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD), which affects nearly half of all lung transplant recipients by five years post-transplant.
