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Boys Town National Research Scientist Publishes Findings in National Scientific Journal

Dominic Cosgrove, Ph.D., Director of Basic Research at Boys Town National Research Hospital, in collaboration with Harvard biologist Raghu Kalluri, published encouraging findings about Alport syndrome in the April 28 online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Kalluri, Cosgrove, and their team of researchers found that bone marrow transplantation may provide a therapeutic benefit for patients with Alport syndrome, a hereditary disease that results in the breakdown of the kidney’s filtration system. Currently, dialysis and transplant are the only treatment options for these patients.

A normally functioning kidney works to purify the blood, filtering waste through a dense network of capillaries and eventually out of the body through urine. It then recycles the purified blood back into the body’s veins. However, with Alport syndrome the kidney’s filtration system often fails causing much of the waste to remain in a person’s blood system. If untreated, accumulation of these waste products will cause coma and death.

Through their research, Kalluri and Cosgrove found that Alport mice that were given a bone marrow transplant containing bone marrow stem cells had 70-80% less protein in their urine and 86% less toxic waste in their blood than the mice who did not receive the transplant. “Such optimistic findings provide hope for researchers of Alport syndrome as well as the one in 5,000 Americans affected by the disease,” explains Kalluri.