12/1/2017
Organ recipient, Janine Cassata, right, with HLA lab supervisor, Angela Busacco.
On December 16, Janine Cassata will celebrate the one-year anniversary of her organ transplant.
The 50-year-old realtor from Chili was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was just 2 years old. It wasn’t until after she suffered an e-coli infection as an adult and her kidneys began to fail that her doctor told her she would need a kidney transplant. He suggested a pancreas transplant as well.
Just six months after being added to a waiting list, Cassata was woken up by an early morning phone call. It was the organ transplant coordinator at Strong Memorial Hospital.
“He said, ‘We have a kidney and a pancreas for you and you need to come in right away if you’re interested,” recalls Cassata. “I had to collect my thoughts,” she said. “I was in shock.”
An hour later, she went in for the procedure, which was a success. Months later, she got the rare chance to meet someone who played a part in her transplant behind the scenes.
Cassata was at a graduation at her neighbor’s house when the host introduced her to a fellow party guest, Angela Busacco.
Unbeknownst to her, Busacco is the chief supervisor in the HLA Typing Laboratory at URMC. This lab performs that complex testing that makes it possible to match organ donors and recipients.
Lab employees almost never get the chance to meet the people they help. So when Busacco was introduced to Cassata, tears came to her eyes. What’s more, she remembered her by name. The women talked and embraced.
“These names that we see on a regular basis; they become people,” said Busacco.
The organ donation process is highly collaborative – with a team of people and organizations working around the clock to ensure the best match possible. Here we describe how the lab plays a key role in this journey from Day 1.
How it Works:
The HLA/Tissue Typing Lab team at Strong Memorial Hospital.
When a patient needs an organ transplant, they go through an initial medical evaluation that includes blood and serum tests.
The DNA in their blood cells is tested to identify which human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes and antigens the patient is born with. Importantly, the recipient’s serum must also be screened for HLA antibodies that could cause a transplant to be unsuccessful.
HLAs are microscopic proteins that exist on the surface of white blood cells. They help the body’s immune system respond to foreign cells by presenting information to T and B cells that may target and attack foreign cells.
In order to be matched with a suitable donor, the recipient must not have antibodies that would actively target transplanted tissue. You can acquire HLA antibodies in different ways, such as having a prior transplant (successful or unsuccessful) or through a blood transfusion. They can also be present in women who have had multiple pregnancies.
All of this information is reported back to the clinicians before the patient gets listed in a national database (managed by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS) to be eligible to receive a deceased donor organ as it becomes available.
Each patient has their own unique profile when it comes to antigens and antibodies, so every case must be examined closely.
“Some people know you by face, but we get to know somebody by their antibody profile,” said Myra Coppage, Ph.D., Lab Director.
Kidneys are the most transplanted organ at Strong Memorial Hospital. Half of these transplants are from living donors, often relatives who closely match the recipient’s blood and HLA typing. The other half, currently about 350 patients, are waiting for kidneys from deceased organ donors.
Each month, the HLA Lab obtains a serum sample from every patient on the waiting list. The serum is tested on an ongoing basis to monitor any changes and to check for any new HLA antibodies.
A large portion of the daily work flowing through the lab is HLA typing for potential donors who must undergo the same thorough screening. Lab techs perform flow cytometry cross matching to check for compatibility. In this case, cells from the donor are mixed in the same tube with serum from the recipient to see if a rejection reaction takes place.
Becoming Batman
William Femec (MT) and Helene McMurray; Ph.D. in the HLA Laboratory.
There is always a lab tech on call 24/7 to respond to a call for a deceased donor. This is when an organ donor dies and their HLA typing from DNA must be performed as soon as possible to identify a matching recipient who is willing and able to receive the organ while it’s still viable.
When a call about a deceased donor comes in, time is crucial, explains Helene McMurray, Ph.D., the HLA Lab’s director-in-training.
“It’s a little bit like being Batman,” said McMurray. “When the bat signal goes off, somebody has to show up to work.”
Oftentimes, calls for deceased donors come in late at night or in the early morning when the on-call tech must perform the HLA typing as soon as possible. The process includes manual and automated steps that follow a tight protocol. It can take up to five hours for the tech to finish each step.
“They are juggling HLA typing on the patient, doing the cross match procedure, and potentially antibody screening at the same time by themselves,” said Busacco. “The stuff that we batch and rotate among everybody in the lab (during the day) – that person is doing it all alone.”
The tech must multitask like a chef juggling different side dishes on a tight deadline. Meanwhile, they are taking calls from doctors, nurses, and organ procurement staff checking on the status of the results.
After the HLA typing is complete, the donor’s information is entered into the UNOS database so the organ can be matched with a list of potential recipients.
Once the ordered list of matching recipients is generated, the transplant center coordinators can contact recipients like Janine Cassata and offer them a lifesaving opportunity to receive a transplant.
It is not unusual for the lab tech to get most of the way through the lengthy HLA typing process only to learn that the donation will not happen. This could either because the family of the deceased has chosen not to move forward, or the organ procurement organization determines the organs are not of acceptable quality. This is a difficult but familiar part of the job.
At the end of the day, however, the HLA team knows that each piece of their highly technical role directly impacts positive patient outcomes.
“A transplant is not happening without our piece of it,” said Busacco. “There wouldn’t be an error where we were skipped over or weren’t needed. It just wouldn’t happen.”
Helping ‘Complicated’ Patients
As Laboratory Director, Dr. Myra Coppage has advocated for patients on a national level with the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI), where she has held a variety of roles, most recently, Program Director for Laboratory Accreditation.
Coppage has served on committees that changed the national rules specifically addressing transplants for immunologically complicated patients who can sit on waiting lists for years.
Patients who have multiple antibodies, either from having many children or failed transplants, were previously stuck waiting for a match while others skipped ahead of them.
“The techs have people they’re always pulling for because they come to the top a lot and have been waiting for a long time,” said Coppage. “Those are the people who need us.”
8/3/2017
Laboratory personnel were recently recognized at Strong Memorial Hospital at an event celebrating the launch of the new nucleic acid testing (NAT) laboratory.
The new FDA-approved lab, which officially opened in February, performs serologic testing to screen for HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. These results must be obtained before a consenting donor’s organ can legally be transplanted into a recipient.
Prior to the launch, the closest FDA lab that did this testing was located in Philadelphia. Establishing the new lab has significantly reduced the amount of turnaround time for these lifesaving procedures.
Representatives from URMC, the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network (FLDRN) and regional organ procurement organizations came together on July 26 to recognize and thank the laboratory personnel who are on call 24/7 to perform this testing when needed.
“Bringing NAT testing here to Rochester really shortens the time, which helps donor organs to be more viable and more appropriate for the recipients, so we really are quite thankful that this team was able to make this testing possible,” said Kathy Parrinello, Chief Operating Officer of URMC.
Since it first opened, the lab has processed tests for 44 donors. It services Rochester, Buffalo, and Albany with hopes to expand this service area in the future.
“We do this because we in the laboratory are uniquely qualified to do this little piece of transplant testing,” said Dr. Dwight Hardy, Director of Clinical Microbiology at URMC. “We do it to be responsible members of the medical center community and Finger Lakes community, to see that organs that are to be potentially transplanted in patients are safe.”
Surgeons like Dr. Roberto Hernandez Alejandro, Chief of Transplantation Surgery at URMC, see many benefits to having NAT testing under the same roof.
“There was a huge push for doing this in a short period of time because families were requesting it,” said Hernandez Alejandro. “For those (surgeons) that are saving organs for transplantations, this is a great benefit.”
He explained that although this testing happens behind the scenes, no transplant can occur without it.
“It’s a huge part of transplantation,” he said. “Helping just one donor and saving one life is huge.”
Read more about the NAT Lab
4/26/2017
Just about everyone who knew or worked with Dr. Marilyn Menegus (1943-2017) has a story about her.
There was the time she brought a Cheesy Eddie’s carrot cake to work when she got tired of hearing that her staff had never tried it before. A colleague recalled the way she could cut through complex scientific concepts and make them easy for anyone to understand. And her coworkers can remember how she’d warmly greet them with, “Hey kid,” no matter their age.
Dr. Menegus, known to many as, simply, Marilyn, passed away March 20, 2017 from complications resulting from colon cancer. Since then, the response from those who knew her has been felt deeply by many.
To celebrate her life and legacy, the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine will host an informal event at the University of Rochester Medical Center on Friday, May 12.
Marilyn was an extremely accomplished and well respected microbiologist who joined the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in 1976 with a secondary appointment in Pathology & Lab Medicine.
She trained more than 40 clinical microbiology fellows and five infectious disease fellows during her 41 years at URMC, earning her the title of “mother of the post-doc program.” She stayed in contact with many of her past trainees, whom she treated like family. Many went on to work in prestigious laboratories across the U.S. Her impact on their professional lives remains strong.
“She was truly a mentor, always eager to share interesting clinical cases and inserting educational tidbits along the way,” said former fellow, Kristen Smith, Ph.D. “The depth of her knowledge and passion always amazed me.”
Former Pathology resident Vanesa Bijol, M.D., who now works in the Harvard University health system, said the sheer number of lives touched by Marilyn was huge. “In that sense, her professional impact was huge, and very few of us who devote life to academia can achieve that level of success,” Bijol wrote. “But she never thought of it that way. She just simply enjoyed her work, science, and teaching, and was very humble about her achievements.”
Marilyn was born and raised in Passaic, New Jersey with siblings, Dorothy and Herbert. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the College of Saint Elizabeth and later received her Ph.D. in virology from Cornell University in 1971.
In her early career, she established a clinical virology laboratory at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City and also founded a clinical virology lab at URMC, which was one of the few of its kind in the U.S. during the late 1970s. During the course of her career, she published more than 100 articles and book chapters as an author and co-author.
She was an active member of organizations including the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Society for Microbiology. In 2013 she received the Diagnostic Virology Award from the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology.
In what became one of her final professional contributions, Marilyn worked closely with the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network to establish a nucleic acid testing lab at Strong Memorial Hospital to significantly expedite the organ transplant process for organ recipients. This was launched successfully in February just weeks before her passing.
Rob Kochik, executive director of FLDRN, said he was heartbroken to hear the news of Marilyn’s death.
“She was always such a joy to work with,” he wrote. “She was committed to helping establish the NAT testing facility because she truly understood how vitally important it was to help the donation process.”
Despite her expertise and accomplishments, many remember Marilyn as an extremely approachable and down to earth person; a lover of gardening, food, wine, and a good joke.
Her brother describes her as “fiercely independent” and a rule breaker at heart. This was evidenced by one of her favorite movies, “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,” and a stack of unpaid red light tickets.
An avid gardener, she once served as president of the Genesee Region Orchid Society and had more than 200 orchids in her house, in addition to a lush garden at her Rochester home where she lived with two cats, Bella and Luigi, and frequently hosted parties for friends.
Whether you knew her for 20 years or 20 minutes, Marilyn made a warm and lasting impression on the people she encountered at or outside of work. Debra Jesien, chief supervisor of Clinical Microbiology at URMC, worked closely with Marilyn for many years.
“She could bond with people very quickly,” said Jesien. “She was the type of person you could talk to once and you felt like you knew her.”
EVENT INFO:
What: Memories of Marilyn, an informal memorial to celebrate the life of Dr. Marilyn Menegus. Guests are encouraged to bring their stories and photos to share.
When: Friday, May 12 from 12:00-2:00 p.m.
Where: LeChase Assembly Hall (G-9576) University of Rochester Medical Center. Drinks and light refreshments will be provided.
RSVP: Please follow this link to enter your RSVP online or contact Bethany Bushen for more information.
Read the obituary of Dr. Menegus in the Democrat and Chronicle