Zaragoza, 11 mar (EFE).-A research team of Zaragoza, directed by Dr. Marta Navarro Zorraquino, studied how stem cells can prevent the rejection of transplants, especially bowel, which have a higher rate of mortality and of which most are carried out in children.
Navarro Zorraquino, degree in Pharmacy and medicine and world pioneer in the immunological aspects of the surgery, designed three years ago a project to study in rats the rejection of transplants, because the immune system of these animals is quite similar to humans, explained in an interview with Efe.
In particular, investigations have been addressed to the transplant of intestine, as the body which has more difficulties to implement, with a high rate of mortality and morbidity in human clinical, and because most occurs in children, has added the doctor, only female Spanish medicine of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences section.
In the project, which is developed at the Institute for health research of Aragon, collaborates the surgery service that directs the doctor Lopez Santamaria in the children’s Hospital de la Paz of Madrid, where the largest number of this type of transplants have made in Spain and one of the most considered centers abroad.
According to Navarro Zorraquino, the problem in transplantation is the rejection and immunosuppression, which implies that the patient can die from infections, which is why “need a balance” so that that body be rejected.
A “particularly difficult” issue in the operations of intestine, a body which in its opinion has many lymphocytes, cells of the immune system, so it is necessary to lower defenses but not to the point that the person dies from an infection, said.
That is why the group “Surgery immunological aspects” of the Institute for health research of Aragon and the University of Zaragoza, who directs Navarro Zorraquino, to work on a project of “immuno-modulation” with stem cells obtained from the fatty tissue, for his involvement in the balance of the immune response inflamatoria-antiinflamatoria.
Navarro Zorraquino (Zaragoza, 1942), along with Dr. Cristina Pastor and three doctors of Hospital La Paz, have completed the phase preclinical with one hundred rats, which have been transplant of intestine, in operations of microsurgery for a duration of three hours, in which participated an anesthesiologist, a nurse and an Assistant.
The intestines of some rats have have introduced them other with different genes, to produce a rejection, and while a group was injected in intestinal stem cells obtained from fat tissue from another identical joints, the other was conducted a routine operation.
Now, will have to analyze the results of biopsies and peripheral cells, in order to check if the stem cells have been able to modify the immune response to the rejection of the transplant, has emphasized Navarro Zorraquino, who in 1975 was the first woman in Spain that held the post of clinical Chief of surgery at the Hospital ClÃnico de Zaragoza.
Analyses, of thirty parameters already identified, are in the hope that the draft would receive a new grant, has added this doctor, one of the only three extraordinary collaborating professors of the University of Zaragoza.
In this sense, has complained that the crisis is affecting much research, if stop projects it is “very difficult to later recover the time lost”.
