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>> This is the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Since 1966, more than 10,000 kidney transplants have been performed at UW Health,
including more than 1,000 simultaneous kidney-pancreas transplants,
more than any other program in the world.
Today, in this sealed-off access lab in the heart of the University Hospital,
another team of research scientists and practicing physicians is pushing
that historic legacy further, testing a breakthrough technology with life
and death consequences for transplant recipients.
>> Our laboratory -- you cannot just walk in there.
Access is very restricted.
Only really trained personnel that has to work there goes in.
So, you get a chance to look, you're going to be really lucky.
Because I don't get to go to the lab.
I cannot just walk in there, even though I'm the Medical Director.
>> Our role is to go where no one has gone before.
UW Health is one of the largest kidney transplant programs in the U.S.
>> Kidney transplant is quite common.
We do about 300, 400 here, at UW.
>> Kidney transplant's transformative.
But the kidney is not yours.
It's somebody else's.
So, you have to pop pills to suppress your immune system,
so your immune system doesn't reject the kidney.
>> But here comes the problem.
When we suppress the immune system, we also suppress all immune defense
against any type of infection a patient can have.
>> The problem we have with the current medication is
that there is a lot of off-target effects.
They fight infection, but they also can be toxic to the kidneys.
And specifically, the transplanted kidney that we are hoping to keep going.
>> You know, Sophie's choice.
Either I lose my kidney to get rid of the virus or if I want to keep my kidney,
I'm stuck with this virus [inaudible].
>> We're addressing an insoluble problem.
>> The cutting edge program for advanced cell therapy was formed
to address this very kind of vexing problem.
>> We select a donor.
That can be a relative of the patient.
And then we take the white blood cells...
>> And we can pluck out those immune cells that are specific for the virus.
Because in our blood, we have immune cells that are specific for this or that specific virus.
>> And we're going to only take those and give them to the patient.
>> We give you this small amount of virus-specific T cells,
which is a gift of your relatives, and they eradicate the virus.
That's cell therapy.
You can keep your kidney, but you get rid of the virus.
>> This is the first clinical trial in the United States,
addressing CMV infection in kidney transplant recipients.
And for that, it's a unique for UW Health, as an organization and for the collaborators
and scientists in the area, to advance the field, for the United States and abroad.
Having a treatment that's safe and effective
for CMV would help clearly thousands of patients, every year.
We are very hopeful that it will work and it will advance the field quite significantly.
>> There are thousands of kidney transplants done across the U.S. every year.
That means, every year, there are hundreds of patients that are stuck with Sophie's choice.
And they could come here and we could fix that problem for them.
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