Intro: It’s Taneisha Nicole and this is Ask A Scientist. I’m talking with Dr. Sean Agbor-Enoh of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH about his research with lung transplant patients.

TN: So, you discovered a way to detect if a patient is rejecting their donor organ with a blood test. How does it work?

SAE: When that organ is getting rejected, the cells are dying and they are releasing the donor DNA into the recipient’s blood. If we see donor DNA in the recipients’ blood, then the organ is being rejected.
TN: Wow, that’s so simple!

SAE: Sometimes the simplest thing cannot just only make sense; it can work. It also works in heart transplants, in kidney transplants, in liver transplants.

TN: What’s next for your research?

SAE: We want to find better ways of matching donors and recipients to prevent rejection. And then we want to find better treatments for rejection.

Outro: Find more on the impact of scientific research at nhlbi.nih.gov.