Doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center have performed the institution’s first kidney and liver transplants in which organs from deceased donors with HIV were transplanted into recipients who also have HIV, the hospital announced Monday.
The approach can significantly shorten the wait for a lifesaving organ. officials said. The patient who received the first HIV-positive donor kidney had been on the wait list for more than two years and was not expected to receive an organ offer in the near future. Once listed on the HIV-positive organ list, the patient received an organ offer in less than a week.
This patient and the first HIV-positive liver recipient are doing well following their transplants, which were made possible by the center’s new HIV-to-HIV transplant program, currently the only one of its kind in the Los Angeles area.
“We brought together a team of liver and kidney transplant surgeons, nephrologists, hepatologists, transplant pharmacists, infectious disease experts, transplant coordinators and more to launch this program,” said transplant surgeon Dr. Tsuyoshi Todo, the lead surgeon on both transplants.
Cedars-Sinai’s HIV-to-HIV transplant program represents a dramatic shift from just over a decade ago, when federal law prohibited organs from donors with HIV from being transplanted into any patient, including those where were also HIV-positive.
That changed in 2013 with the passage of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, which allowed clinical researchers to study HIV-to-HIV transplants. After years of research documented the safety and effectiveness of HIV-to-HIV transplants, the rule was amended in 2024, removing the strict research requirements, and Cedars-Sinai quickly formed a multidisciplinary committee of experts to bring the institution’s HIV-to-HIV program to life.
“The first six months post-transplant is when the immune system is being hit the hardest,” said Dr. Christopher Foltz, lead infectious disease specialist for the HIV-to-HIV transplant program at Cedars-Sinai. “We will monitor the patient’s HIV closely during this time, but eventually, they’ll be able to get back to monitoring once or twice a year, like they would have been doing before.”