(Pittsburgh, PA) September 19, 2007—17 month-old Andrew Morrissey will undergo life-saving transplant surgery this month. He will receive a kidney from his grandmother, and a portion of his father’s liver. Andrew needs the new organs because of a rare genetic disease, PKD.

Andrew and his family will travel from the Baltimore area to Pittsburgh where doctors at the Hillman Center for Pediatric Transplantation at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC expect to perform the surgery on Wednesday, September 19.

Polycystic Kidney disease or PKD is one of the world’s most common life-threatening, genetic diseases. PKD causes cysts to form in the kidneys and eventually the kidneys fail. Andrew suffers from ARPKD, which is a relatively rare form of PKD that affects 1 in 20 thousand babies. It often leads to death in the first months of life. Both parents have to carry the recessive ARPKD gene. They have a 25% change of passing the disease on to each of their children.

Andrew was diagnosed soon after birth, but doctors knew something was wrong before he was born and his mother spent the last weeks of her pregnancy in the hospital while doctor’s monitored Andrew’s health. Andrew had both kidneys removed before he was a month-old. He has been on dialysis even since. His mom administers the dialysis to Andrew for 12 hours each day. Dialysis and transplantation are the only treatments for kidney failure. There is no cure for PKD.

The not-for-profit PKD Foundation leads the fight against polycystic kidney disease (PKD) through research funding and patient education. To learn more, visit www.pkdcure.org

Children’s established the nation’s first pediatric transplant center in 1981 under the guidance of transplant pioneer Thomas E. Starzl, MD, PhD. The hospital has performed more pediatric transplants than any other pediatric center. Children’s Hillman Center for Pediatric Transplantation achieves patient survival rates that are among the highest in the world and also is recognized as a leader in transplantation-related research. For more information, please visit http://www.chp.edu/.

To arrange interviews with the Morrissey family; contact PKD Foundation Media Manager, Jennifer Robinson, at (800) PKD-CURE or jenniferr@pkdcure.org, or Marc Lukasiak, coordinator of Media Relations at Children’s Hospital, at (412) 692-7919.