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Renal Transplant Essay

Decent Essays

There are thousands of kidney transplants done a year in the United States. However, after transplantation, the patient’s immune system will see the new kidney as an invader and attack it. To counteract this phenomenon, physicians prescribe immunosuppressants. Although immunosuppressants are necessary for the body to accept the new kidney, many side effects of these medications have been established, with many of these effects being specifically harmful to the kidneys, so the question that needs to be answered is how do we ensure the long-term survival of renal transplant patients? Dr. Bai’s research focused specifically on the immunosuppressant Cyclosporine A (CsA). In the body, CsA’s specific target is Calcineurin A (CnA), which plays an …show more content…

In order to test her hypothesis, Dr. Bai had three different types of mice cell cultures: renal fibroblast cells from mice knocked out for the alpha isoform, renal fibroblast cells from mice knocked out for the beta isoform, and wild type mice cells. First, she wanted to detect the MMP-9 concentration in cells, so she treated the three cell types with CsA and performed a western blot. These results showed that basal levels of intracellular MMP-9 is similar in all the fibroblasts cells, and in the beta isoform knock out mice, there were increased CsA-induced MMP-9 protein levels in comparison to the basal levels.
Next, Dr. Bai investigated the extracellular mechanism of MMP-9, so she took the same cultures as before, treated them with CsA, collected the supernatant, and performed the MMP-9 ELISA, which detects and measures the protein concentration in a biological cell. They saw that the alpha knockout cells, without any treatment, had significantly higher MMP-9 secretion compared to wild type and beta-knockout mice, and when treated with CsA, all of the different cultures saw an increase in MMP-9 levels. Subsequently, Dr. Bai used the EnzChek Gelatinase Assay in order to measure the activity of MMP-9 in renal fibroblasts before and after CsA treatment. Here, she saw that the alpha knockout cells had much higher MMP-9 activities than the wild type and beta isoform cells. In

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