Cancer Reoccurrence After Liver Transplantation...derived from cancer cells in donor liver
Jan 07, 2025
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Cancer cells in the donor's liver are believed to have originated, British media Daily Mail reported.
The case was published as a research paper in the international journal 『The Oncologist』.
According to the research paper, A, a 69-year-old man living in Arizona, USA, was suffering from cirrhosis.
Patient A had alcoholic cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a type of liver cancer, which required liver transplantation.
Pre-examination showed no signs of cancer other than the liver.
Six months after his initial diagnosis of liver cancer, he underwent liver transplantation at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.
The donor was a 50-year-old male brain dead.
The transplant was successful, but a few months later, A was diagnosed with cancer again.
In further examination of biopsy-extracted cells, the cancer was markedly different from the disease suffered prior to liver transplantation.
Four months after the transplant, A had regular ultrasound and found two solid masses in his liver. Since then, it has gradually increased, and after 6 weeks, MRI showed countless liver masses.
Based on the results of numerous experiments, doctors concluded that the new cancer cells in the liver originated in the donor's liver.
In other words, cancer cells in the donor's liver grew into tumors in the transplanted body of A and then spread to the lungs.
However, the donor had a history of smoking, but had no history of lung tumors or cancer.
In addition, no tumor or cause of concern was found in the pre-donation examination.
A, who was receiving chemotherapy, eventually died of liver failure six months later.
The medical team explained in the paper that "To our knowledge, this is the first case where donor-derived cancer has been detected from a cancer-free donor."
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
