Aiko de Vries appointed professor

Improve longevity of transplanted kidneys and quality of life of patient

Kidney transplantation is the best kidney function-replacement therapy for a longer and better-quality life for patients with kidney failure. Transplanted kidneys only currently have a limited lifespan due to a wobbly balance between lifelong prevention of rejection by (heavy) immunosuppressive drugs and their side effects (infectious, oncological, cardiovascular and metabolic).De Vries: “With our research, we aim to improve the length of life of transplanted kidneys and the quality of life of patients. We do this primarily by investigating better and new immunosuppressive strategies. In addition, we are conducting research into more tailored monitoring and treatment of rejection and complications (personalized medicine). In addition, we want to better understand rejection and test and develop new care formats.”

Multidisciplinary character

In addition to being a professor, De Vries is vice president of the LUMC Transplant Center and head of kidney transplantation. In transplant medicine, many different specialties work together. These include nephrology, surgery, pathology, immunology, toxicology, virology, regenerative medicine, hepatology, and academic pharma.

“This places the chair at the center of the unique multidisciplinary character of LUMC to enable the best transplant care together. In these roles, I want to improve the quality of care, personalize, partly digitize, and manage the increase in the number of transplants and transplanted people. This against a future of increasingly ageing donors and recipients, increasing staff shortages and not infinite budgets. To this end, we have also built a multidisciplinary transplant database that brings together clinical information, hospital information, medication, digital pathology, and immunology data. The database can be used for advanced data research, as well as for care evaluation and policy decisions.” 

Education

In addition to care and research, the transplant center is committed to education. “We train students of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, nurses (dialysis/transplantation), nursing specialists, physician assistants, and physician assistants,” says De Vries, “We are also committed to various types of in-depth education. For example, the honors class Organ Transplantation for students seeking extra depth alongside their studies. But we also contribute to the half minor in Clinical Immunology and the Leiden Oxford Transplantation Summer School (LOTS).”

Resume

studied Medicine in Groningen. After this, he trained as an internist in University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), Curacao and Leiden. His PhD research at UMCG was on late and metabolic complications of kidney transplant failure. From 2008, he further specialized in kidney diseases and transplantation at LUMC.

He is currently chairman of the transplant working group NEFRO-NL. He is also former chairman of the Landelijke Overleg Niertransplantatie, and former director at the Nederlandse Federatie Nefrologie and at Nefrovisie, the quality institute for kidney care.

LUMC Transplant Center

The LUMC Transplant Center is committed to providing the best care in the right place and the best possible life for all transplant patients. Innovation and scientific research in the field of organ transplantation and regeneration forms the basis for this. In addition to kidney transplantation, the center specializes in liver, pancreas, kidney-pancreas, liver-kidney, and islets-of-Langerhans transplantation.