PKLI starts collaboration with US researchers

LAHORE:A Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute and Research Centre team has started collaboration with a group of researchers led by Dr Alex Chen from Stanford University in Stanford, California, USA, and Dr Saad Salman from Harvard School of Public Health for initiating paired kidney donation programme in Pakistan.

The US team will develop a computerised matching module for paired exchange programme using multiple medical practices to offer the best match for both the donor and the recipient. According to a press release issued here on Wednesday, PKLI President Dr Prof Saeed Akhter headed the hospital team which included Medical Director Dr Amer Yar Khan and clinical teams from transplant, pathology and ICU departments for the discussions.

Dr Chen graduated from MIT and Harvard, worked as vice-president at UnitedHealth. Now he intends to complete his doctorate at Stanford in health economics under the supervision of Nobel laureate Al Roth, who is well known for computer mathematical modelling. His research at Stanford focuses on mechanism design in healthcare.

Paired donation is also known as “paired kidney exchange” or “kidney swap.” This donation takes place when there is incompatibility of living kidney donor with the recipient. Such live donor-patient pairs exchange kidneys with each other. Paired donation increases match rate significantly so PKLI believes that the launch of the programme will bolster Pakistani healthcare sector, especially when a huge number of patients are found to be incompatible with their potential donors.

Both sides had a session of open discussions and proposed formulation of a partnership between PKLI, Harvard and Stanford. It was decided that PKLI wold involve Punjab Human Organ Transplantation Authority (PHOTA) in the process for its consent to proceed further towards preparing a registry of donor/recipient pairs and developing paired exchange mechanism.

PKLI management expressed that such collaborations are part of the institute’s focus on research and development of treatment facilities to ensure the delivery of top-notch health services to patients.

LCWU: Associate Prof Dr Faiza Saleem and Prof Dr Shagufta Naz of Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) have been honoured to receive United State Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent on their invention titled, “Process for recombinant protein expression augmentation in bacillus expression system.”

According to a press release issued here on Wednesday, the invention was examined by USPTO examiners and then it was found eligible for a patent. It is pertinent to mention that receiving USPTO patent is an honour and very few professors in Pakistan have USPTO patent.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification. The USPTO is unique among the federal agencies because it operates solely on the fees collected from its users, and not on taxpayer's money. Its operating structure is like a business. It receives requests for services — applications for patents and trademark registrations — and charges fees projected to cover the cost of performing the services it provides.

The USPTO cooperates with the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) as one of the Trilateral Patent Offices. The USPTO is also a Receiving Office, an international searching authority and an international preliminary examination authority for international patent applications filed in accordance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

It is the second USPTO patent in the history of LCWU. Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Farkhanda Manzoor and all the faculty members have greeted Prof Dr Faiza Saleem and Prof Dr Shagufta Naz.