A University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences researcher has received a $2.46 million grant to study the long-term outcomes of receiving kidneys from deceased donors.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded Nirmala Parajuli, DVM, Ph.D., the grant, which will spread across five years, to research a drug therapy aimed at reducing damage to donated kidneys while they are in cold storage. According to a UAMS release, kidney transplants from deceased donors account for approximately 70 percent of all kidney transplants with long-term outcomes “generally poor.”
During the research, Parajuli will be testing drugs that are mixed in the solution that is used to store kidneys that were rejected for transplantation.
“There are about 100,000 patients waiting for kidney transplants, and many of them will die while they are waiting,” Parajuli said in a statement. “My goal is to reduce the kidney injury caused by cold storage and increase the pool of healthy kidneys available to the people who need them.”
Parajuli is an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and she is a UAMS Research Academy Scholar.
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