UBC Spinout Avivo Biomedical Reveals World-First Blood-Type Conversion

Several thousand Canadians are waiting for lifesaving organ transplants, but many donor organs go unused due to blood-type mismatch.

Researchers recently transplanted a donor kidney after converting it from blood type A to the universal type O, removing a major barriers in organ donation: blood-type compatibility.

The world-first transplant was conducted by Dr. Turun Song in West China Hospital in Chengdu in partnership with the University of British Columbia as well as Vancouver-based bio-tech upstart Avivo Biomedical.

Researchers in this study used a proprietary enzyme system, originally discovered at UBC and then developed by Avivo, to convert a type A kidney to type O.

“This is the first time a type A human kidney has been converted to [type-O] and successfully transplanted into a mismatched recipient,” says John Coleman, who serves as chief executive officer of Avivo.

The ability to convert donor kidneys, and ultimately other organs, could dramatically expand the donor pool and reduce waitlist mortality, according to Coleman.

The discovery “represents the culmination of over a decade of foundational science at UBC and shows how university spin-out companies like Avivo can bring transformative research to patients worldwide,” remarked professor Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu, who works at UBC in the the Department of Pathology.

Kizhakkedathu was involved in the study, which was this month published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“An enzyme-converted O kidney was transplanted into a type-O brain-dead recipient with a high titre of anti-A antibody, and no hyperacute rejection was observed,” an abstract reads. “This study provides a donor-centric organ engineering strategy and has the potential to broaden the reach of ABO-incompatible kidney transplantation, improving the fairness of and access to organ allocation.”

Publication in Nature Biomedical Engineering “underscores the significance of this breakthrough and its potential to transform organ transplantation,” according to Coleman.

“By enabling every donor organ to become universally compatible, our ECO platform has the potential to save more lives and reduce waitlist mortality,” he said.

Avivo rebranded from ABOzymes in 2022.