Deepti Antony: How to recondition donor kidneys to reduce organ shortage
The conclusion of Deepti Antony's thesis is that a long period without oxygen does not in itself mean that a kidney from a patient who dies of cardiac arrest outside the hospital is irreparably damaged. If the method developed in her thesis — already tested on human kidneys at Sahlgrenska University Hospital — can be validated by transplant outcomes in patients, it could reduce, and perhaps eventually eliminate, the shortage of donor kidneys.
DEEPTI ANTONY
Dissertation defense: 16 October 2026 (click for details )
Doctoral thesis: Functional recovery of donated kidneys after uncontrolled circulatory death: From lab to patient
Research area: Surgery
Sahlgrenska Academy, The Institute of Clinical Sciences
Far more people need a kidney transplant than there are organs available, and thousands die on waiting lists every year. One of the largest untapped sources of donor kidneys – people who die suddenly of cardiac arrest outside hospital – is almost always lost, because the delay before recovery leaves the kidney's smallest blood vessels blocked by clots.
“My doctoral work focuses on recovering and reconditioning donor kidneys that would otherwise be discarded, says Deepti Antony, bachelor's in biotechnology engineering and a master's in molecular biology, and a doctoral student at the Laboratory for Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine at the Institute of Clinical Sciences.”
Her thesis raises the question of whether it is precisely these clots—rather than the time without oxygen itself—that prevent the kidney from recovering, and whether the kidney can be saved by dissolving the clots.
How to bring kidneys back into use
Deepti Antony’s research develops a way to bring kidneys of patient dying of circulatory arrest outside the hospital back into use: outside the body, the kidney is treated with clot-dissolving drugs and perfused on a machine that restores its circulation and lets its condition be assessed before transplantation.
– We tested this reconditioning first in a pig model and then applied it to human kidneys donated after circulatory death.
Results may shorten transplant waiting lists
In the pig model, their technology cleared the microscopic clot obstruction and supported working transplants for three months, while molecular analysis showed the injured kidney shifting toward recovery rather than scarring.
This suggests that even after prolonged warm ischemia (WIT)* a kidney need not be beyond saving, pointing toward a practical way to expand the donor pool and shorten transplant waiting lists.
“We also have gotten an approved ethical permit to conduct a first-in-man transplantation study, which we hope to begin soon at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.”
What have been the most rewarding aspects of your doctoral project?
“The most rewarding part has been watching the work travel all the way from the bench to the first human kidneys — the "from lab to patient" journey the thesis is named for – and getting to draw on both my engineering and molecular biology background along the way, from the machine perfusion setup to the molecular analysis. “
What have been the most challenging?
“The hardest part has been the uncontrolled nature of this kind of donation, where the timing, unpredictability, and some of the longest warm-ischemia times* yet reported make every experiment demanding.”
Text: Susanne Lj Westergren
*Warm ischemia time (WIT) is the length of time an organ or tissue stays at normal body temperature without a blood supply before it is cooled or connected to a new blood supply.