Expanding access to solid organ transplantation has been a major focus of research efforts in the Reese research group for the past decade, with projects in the areas of policy, ethics, incentives, and clinical trials. With colleagues, Dr. Reese demonstrated the safety and efficacy of transplanting organs from donors with hepatitis C virus infection, which paved the way for thousands of additional transplants to take place. This work included an analysis of the ethics and the opportunity in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed by the THINKER and MYTHIC (kidney transplant), USHER (heart), and SHELTER (lung) trials. Results from these trials and related work have been published in JAMA and the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Reese has also provided important evidence of the benefits of accepting kidneys from deceased donors at increased risk of hepatitis C and HIV (American Journal of Transplantation) and from donors with acute kidney injury (Journal of the American Society of Nephrology). In addition, he has addressed changing the incentives to accept higher risk organs in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, with proposals to: a) change allocation to direct higher risk kidneys to centers with demonstrated history of accepting those organs, and b) rewarding centers that transplant higher risk organs, either with financial incentives or non-financial recognition. 

Dr. Reese’s research group has also driven novel research into how the geographic distribution of donors and the donor care centers that enable efficient organ procurement may require new solutions to enable every transplant opportunity to be realized.