Comprehensive Transplant Center

Cedars-Sinai’s Comprehensive Transplant Center provides complete services for individuals who require lung, heart, liver, kidney or pancreas transplantation. The center’s research efforts focus on discovering and testing new therapies that can be quickly implemented to improve patient care and save lives.

Research

The Comprehensive Transplant Center’s surgeons, physicians and scientists conduct extensive research to improve transplant procedures, increase survival of transplanted organs and make transplantation possible for more people. Many of their projects are funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Current and recent avenues of investigation include:

• Liver transplantation for patients with HIV and hepatitis co-infection
• Artificial liver support for patients with acute liver failure
• Immunology strategies that prevent organ rejection without increasing susceptibility to infection
• Transplant immunotherapy for kidney recipients highly sensitized to human leukocyte antigens
• Dual kidney transplantation using organs that would otherwise be discarded
• Islet cell transplantation
• Artificial hearts and other supportive devices for heart failure patients
• The potential for bone marrow stem cells to regenerate damaged heart tissue

Clinical Care

The highly successful transplant program at Cedars-Sinai is made possible by the Medical Center’s ability to attract highly experienced transplant surgeons. These world-class specialists are tireless in their pursuit of lifesaving options for their patients.

Living donor liver transplantation, a relatively new and hard-to-find procedure, is an area of particular expertise at Cedars-Sinai. Thanks to this advance, some patients may have the option of receiving a partial liver from a loved one rather than face the uncertainty of waiting for a deceased-donor organ.

Patients who need more than one new organ face particular challenges. At Cedars-Sinai, they find a team ready and willing to take their cases. Likewise, Cedars-Sinai often takes other complex or challenging cases, including kidney transplants for individuals who are highly sensitized to HLA, and liver transplantation hepatitis patients who are also HIV-positive.

Education

The Comprehensive Transplant Center offers an approved two-year fellowship in transplantation surgery, with the first year focused on liver transplantation and second year on kidney and pancreas.

Leadership

Andrew S. Klein, MD
Director, Comprehensive Transplant Center
Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplant Medicine