Research

Each Theme is led by an Academic Lead, supported by an Academic Co-Lead, a Patient Co-Lead and a group of expert advisors, along with a Theme Manager to help coordinate and enhance communications and collaboration across the CDTRP.

The CDTRP is committed to integrating four cross-cutting Research Priorities within each Theme:

Sex and Gender
Pediatric, adolescent and elderly age groups
Indigenous, rural and remote populations
Policy, commercialization and knowledge transfer

To support the five Themes and continue to build capacity, the CDTRP offers exclusive services to its members via four Platforms:

Research Services
Data Innovations
Education and Career Development
Patient Researcher Partnership

Theme 1: Improving Culture of Donation

Creating a culture of donation in our hospitals, governments and society is an essential component of improving the performance of the donation system. This Theme will study methods to measure, create and implement a culture where the benefits of organ, tissue and cell donation are valued by stakeholders across the donation process.

Theme 2: Inform Universal Practices for Donation

As a means to continuously improve the donation process and develop the field of donation sciences in Canada, this Theme is also set to better the transplant yield from willing individuals, living or deceased, who are in a position to donate.

Theme 3: Engineer and Allocate Better Grafts

Events occurring during the immediate pre- and post-transplant periods dictate long-term outcomes. With technological advances and building on CDTRP discoveries, investigators can begin to explore modifying and manipulating the graft as well as the recipient before transplant to improve short and long-term outcomes.

Theme 4: Tailor an Optimal Immune System for Each Patient

Patients with organ or islet transplants live with the life-long possibility of rejection, whereas recipients of HCT face the reverse problem: GVHD (where newly-transplanted immune system attacks the body). The immunosuppressive medications that keep rejection and chronic GVHD at bay do so by suppressing all immune responses, leaving patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, renal toxicity and cancer. Patients have identified the inadequacy of current medications and their toxic side-effects as a top research priority.

Theme 5: Restore Long-Term Health

While quality of life generally improves after transplantation, in the long term many patients do not return to their expected level of function and fulfillment. Adverse side-effects and other complications from immunosuppressive medications, complex factors leading to graft failure and sometimes recurrence of the original disease all hinder a return to expected levels of function and fulfillment.