For the first time anywhere, surgeons in Bologna have transplanted kidneys into patients whose immune systems made a compatible match almost impossible to find — using a new drug originally developed to treat cancer.

  • 2 patients received the world-first transplants
  • 13 years one patient had already spent on dialysis
  • 1 hospital: IRCCS Policlinico di Sant'Orsola, Bologna
  • Led by an international team from the Medical University of Vienna

A Drug That Retrains the Immune System

Patients with "hypersensitized" immune systems — often from a prior transplant, pregnancy, or blood transfusion — carry antibodies that attack almost any donor organ on contact, leaving many stuck on dialysis indefinitely with no realistic path to a transplant. Doctors typically manage this with short-term antibody-stripping procedures that wear off quickly, sometimes within days, forcing surgeons to race the clock before the patient's antibodies rebound.

The Bologna team instead used a repurposed cancer drug to sustainably lower the patients' antibody response over time, rather than temporarily filtering it out, according to a press release from EurekAlert, the science-news platform run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That shift — durable suppression instead of a one-time reset — is what made both transplants possible, giving surgeons a much wider window to operate safely.

ANSA, Italy's national news agency, reported the surgeries took place at the IRCCS Policlinico di Sant'Orsola, a teaching hospital in Bologna, as part of an international clinical research effort coordinated by Vienna's Medical University. Both operations were completed without the acute rejection episodes that have historically made hypersensitized transplants so risky.

'We Live Again'

One of the two patients had spent 13 years on dialysis — years of multi-hour sessions tethering life to a machine several times a week, waiting for a compatible donor that medical odds said would likely never come.

"After dialysis, we live again." — one of the transplanted patients, speaking to ANSA

Dialysis keeps patients alive by filtering their blood artificially, but it is not a cure — it comes with its own fatigue, dietary restrictions, and long-term cardiovascular strain. A functioning transplanted kidney restores the body's own filtering system, something no machine fully replicates, and typically gives patients back hours of their week along with far more stable energy levels.

Why Hypersensitized Patients Usually Wait the Longest

Roughly one in three people on kidney transplant waiting lists is considered hypersensitized to some degree, and the most severely sensitized patients can wait years longer than average for a match, if one becomes available at all. Expanding the pool of transplantable organs for this group has been a persistent goal in transplant medicine for decades, since it is often the sickest, longest-waiting patients who are hardest to match.

Because the new approach targets the underlying antibody production rather than just blocking its effects at the moment of surgery, researchers say it could eventually widen the donor pool for patients currently considered nearly untransplantable. The team plans further trials to confirm how durable the effect is beyond the two initial cases and to refine dosing before wider use across other transplant centers.

For now, the result is a hospital in Bologna with two patients who no longer need a dialysis machine to survive — and a treatment strategy that transplant centers around the world will now be watching closely as they look for ways to reach patients who, until recently, had almost nowhere left to turn.