Newcastle University

Aims

The module aims to:

1. Give the student a basic background in key areas related to clinical practice in transplantation including: basic immunology, the role of the MHC tissue typing in transplantation and clinical interventions including the use immunosupressive drugs.

2. To help the student understand the societal issues in clinical transplantation through a discussion of donor and recipeint identification and the legal and ethical issues that apply to clinical practice.

3. To provide an initial insight into the post-transplant world by discussing clinical problems (infection, Post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder PTLD), pregnancy after transplantation and the prospects for the future including use of stem cells etc.,

Altogether the module is intended to provide the first part of the postgraduate transplant programme, but may also be taken as a standalone module.

Outline Of Syllabus

The module is being designed as part of an MSc programme on clinical transplantation and is designed to give a basic background to students taking the course. It includes some background immunology, essential laboratory tests such as tissue typing, the use of clinical interventions such as immunosupressive drugs but also the history, law and ethics of transplantation. In addition students will be introduced to post transplant complications, infection, PTLD and transplantation in pregnancy as well a future developments such as stem cells. The idea is for this module to be the starter module giving a basic overview of transplantation.

The students will have a series of lectures, visits and class discussions as follows:

1. Immunology an introduction
2. Immunology - T and B cells and the innate immune response
3. The Biology of Rejection
4. Tissue Typing - the Biology of the MHC and Cross Matching
5. Tissue Typing - a visit to the NBTS Tissue Typing Facility Barrack Road - Visit
6. Immunosupressive Drugs & Biological Agents 1
7. Haematopoietic cell transplantation
8. Revision of the Immune System in Transplantation (As appropriate) - Seminar
9. NHS Blood and Transplant Structure and Function: The story of Transplantation - from identication of an available donor to reciepient identification - lecture/seminar
10.Transplantation & the Law - Seminar
11.Ethical Considerations in Transplantation - Seminar
12. Viral Infection after Transplantation
13. Bacterial & Fungal Infection
14. PTLD Aetiology and Treatment
15. Pregnancy after Transplantation
16. The Future: Stem Cells? - Centre for Life Facilities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Students will be taught the basic priciples that apply to various aspects of clinical transplantation in a series of one hour lectures designed to deliver information and concepts. The first seminar is designed to allow the students to revise the basics of immunology and transplant rejection. The second seminar will incorporate part of the assessment including critical appraisal of the latest transplantation research from selected papers. The visit to the NHS Blood & Transplant Service will enable the students to see how the processes of HLA typing/crossmatching and donor/recipient selection are carried out and to ask questions about quality and procedures etc.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The three pieces of work cover three stages in the module. The group presentation is intended to assess the student's understanding of the core issues in clinical practice and the student's understanding of the immune system and immunosuppression in the maintainance of immune tolerance in transplantation (covered in the first section). An individual mark will be allocated for this assessment based on the student's presentation skills, interpretation of paper skills and team working skills. Resit presentations will be individual not group. Case studies require the student to extract relevant information and the Powerpoint study to present that information to an audience. This allows the assessment of the student's presentation skills as well as testing their knowledge skills. The short essay looks at the issue of transplantation and society and deals with the knowledge skills for this section of the module. As a written assessment it tests the student's abilities in writing and in IT and knowledge acquisition. The third assessment is a presentation by students working in teams. It is formated to assess the student's ability to work as part of a team as well as to assess their presentation, IT, knowledge and understanding of the subject.