Ben Keselowsky, Ph.D., a professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at UF, and Ali Zarrinpar, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Surgery in the UF College of Medicine, are leading a three-year, $2.6M R01 project funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) that will further develop a novel enzyme-based therapeutic that has shown early promise in the treatment of liver ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI).
This biomedical breakthrough holds particular significance to the NIDDK, which promotes basic research related to digestive diseases, kidney disease, diabetes, and liver, pancreas and small bowel health.
Many injuries and surgical interventions result in IRI — a period of inadequate tissue/organ blood supply followed by the reintroduction of the blood flow (reperfusion), which causes local inflammation, cell death, excessive tissue destruction and possible organ failure. These include organ transplantation.
“This injury gives a hit to that organ, which weakens it and sets it up for more severe rejection episodes,” said project co-investigator Sergio Duarte, Ph.D., a research assistant professor with the Department of Surgery at the UF College of Medicine. The UCLA-trained transplant immunobiologist said, “If we can minimize that reperfusion injury, we give it a better chance against rejection.”
Working alongside co-investigator Greg Hudalla, Ph.D., an associate professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, Dr. Keselowsky constructed the new therapeutic — an approach to direct immune cell metabolism using the inflammation suppressing enzyme indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO).