Liver transplantation offers a successful, often life-saving treatment for children with liver disease.
Many transplanted children now live to be adults, however it is not clear how well these liver grafts work as the children grow into adult life. Some studies have shown that the majority of transplanted livers develop progressive liver scarring (fibrosis) over time.
The Graft Injury Group (GIG) is an international network of medical and surgical specialists and scientists, who are interested in finding out why children develop fibrosis after transplantation and how best to prevent this or treat them. As an ESPGHAN and EASL supported network, the GIG aims to improve the quality of life and survival of children after transplantation.
Vision
The Graft Injury Group has developed an international clinical research platform promoting successful outcomes for long-term paediatric liver transplant recipients by supporting the evaluation of the factors involved in graft injury. This network is composed of centres providing liver transplantation and will include Hepatologists, Transplant Surgeons, Pathologists, Immunologists and Scientists supported by relevant international specialists.
Our collaboration is built on local hospital databases and bio-repositories to establish a comprehensive core dataset and bio-bank, with the scope to perform multi-level phenotyping (clinical, biochemical, serological, histological, genomic and immunological) on long-term liver transplant survivors to detect and prevent graft injury. Through the combined expertise and detailed characterisation of large-scale cohorts we hope to extend our understanding of the key disease mechanisms of long term graft injury; identify phenotypic factors predictive of poor clinical outcome; enable a stratified approach to therapeutics; and establish interdisciplinary guidelines for best practice.