New Strategies to Optimize Kidney Recovery and Preservation in Transplantation

Optimizing kidney preservation is a primary issue in transplantation, particularly in relation to new donor sources, such as expanded criteria donors (ECDs) and donation after cardiac death (DCD). Kidneys from these donors are highly sensitive to ischemia-reperfusion injuries--the emblematic lesions encountered during transplantation. Despite years of research, static cold storage, with solutions designed in the 1980s, remains the gold standard in kidney transplantation. This kind of preservation, however, is unable to fully protect an ECD or DCD kidney, highlighting the need for novel strategies to improve kidney preservation or promote kidney recovery. This Review provides an overview of the emerging strategies to prevent ischemia-reperfusion injuries in donor kidneys and describes strategies that are aimed at the donor, organ or recipient to improve graft outcome. These approaches include management of donors, preconditioning of the kidney, improvements in organ preservation solutions, postconditioning and regenerative therapies of the kidney graft following transplantation. In addition, machine perfusion provides an interesting opportunity to evaluate kidney graft quality before transplantation. Overall, a combination of therapeutic approaches seem to provide the best outcome, but preclinical studies using relevant models are needed before these approaches can be incorporated into clinical practice.