A new therapy appears to improve transplant rates and outcomes for patients waiting for kidney transplants, researchers reported in the July 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to a team of researchers led by Dr. Stanley Jordan of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Genentech’s cancer drug rituximab, combined with infusions of antibodies, greatly reduces the risk that a transplanted kidney will be rejected and vastly improves the chance of patients finding a donor.

The treatment is especially designed for those who are “sensitized” to transplant antigens. According to Dr. Jordan, only 6.5 percent of these patients are able to undergo a transplant each year. These patients are not able to get organ transplants because their immune systems reject the new organ. However, following the new treatment, these patients could make their body more receptive to the transplant.

“However, for the highly sensitized patient, transplantation is not an option unless desensitization therapies are used,” Dr. Jordan said.

In an early-phase trial, Dr. Jordan and colleagues combined intravenous immunoglobulin and rituximab to desensitize patients whose bodies rejected the transplant. The researchers found that eighty percent of patients receiving both drugs were able to get a transplant. Also all patients survived to the end of one year.

Now the findings need to be validated in further trials before being actually used in hospitals.