Transplantation
Transplant researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute have dramatically improved intestinal transplant graft survival, and reduced rejection and infection rates by successfully using a novel immunosuppression minimization protocol, thus improving patients' overall quality of life and avoiding the use of several anti-rejection drugs, which can cause serious infections and major complications. Because the intestine is especially prone to rejection and infection,
Bone marrow transplantation can cure lymphomas and leukemia, but in about half of the cases transplanted immune cells wind up attacking the patient's body, as well as the cancer. In response to this problem, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a technique that can virtually eliminate this life-threatening complication, known as graft-versus-host disease, without compromising the transplanted cells' effectiveness against cancer.
Blacks and poor individuals are more likely to be donors while whites and wealthier individuals are more likely to be recipients of many types of transplant organs, according to a new study in the November 2004 issue of the American Journal of Medicine. The study was conducted by Ashwini Sehgal, M.D., director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at Case Western Reserve University and a nephrologist at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Organ damage that goes beyond the liver due to alcoholism is often seen as a barrier to liver transplantation, despite a lack of data on how a transplant affects these complications. A new study describes a patient with alcoholic liver disease complicated by peripheral neuropathy (nerve damage affecting the arms and legs) who underwent a liver transplant and regained almost normal muscle strength.
Scientists have induced human insulin-producing cells of the pancreas to revert to islet precursor cells. These precursor cells are capable of expansion and appear to naturally and efficiently differentiate into clusters of islet-like cells. This work may help to clarify the natural lifecycle of the beta cell and may eventually have applications for diabetes treatment.
A group of physicians and scientists led by Associate Professor Daniel Salomon, M.D., of the Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, has been awarded a new federal research grant of more than $12 million over five years to apply cutting-edge genomic technologies to advance our understanding of kidney transplantation. The grant was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Bubble-like nano-scale particles that are shed by dendritic cells may hold the key to achieving transplant tolerance -- the long-term acceptance of transplanted organs without the need for drugs, suggests a new study. Exosomes are no larger than 65-100 nanometers -- 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair -- yet each contains a potent reserve of major histocompatibility complex molecules. MHC molecules are gene products that cells use to determine self from nonself. Millions of exosomes scurry about within the bloodstream, and while their function has been somewhat of a mystery, researchers are beginning to surmise that they play an important role in immune regulation and response.
Transplantation of human brain cells corrected involuntary muscle spasms in rats with ischemic spinal cord injury, according to new research. Ischemic spinal cord injury, caused by reduced blood flow to the spinal cord, occurs in 20 to 40 percent of the several hundred patients each year in the U.S. who undergo surgery to repair an aneurysm, or sac-like widening of the aorta, the main artery that leaves the heart. A subpopulation of patients with ischemic spinal cord injury develop a prominent muscle spasticity, or jerkiness of the legs and lower body, due to the irreversible loss of specialized spinal cord cells that control local motor function.
Transplant surgeons have found that a new combination of drugs results in fewer incidences of rejection in liver transplant patients than do current treatments. Surgeons analyzed the results of 50 liver transplant procedures they performed between 2000 and 2002. To try to prevent or lessen the severity of rejection, the group used a monoclonal antibody, basiliximab, as part of a group of drugs that included tacrolimus, a standard anti-rejection agent, and low doses of steroids. Basiliximab, which ties up an important immune system cell (IL-2) receptor, has been used for kidney transplantation.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), one of the National Institutes of Health, have found promising evidence that immune cell transplant therapy can help shrink tumors in patients with metastatic breast cancer. Similar therapies, which also involve transplantation of donated immune cells, have produced dramatic anti-tumor effects in leukemias and lymphomas -- cancers of the blood and lymph, respectively. However, previous studies have not proven that such therapies have clinical effects on breast cancer.
Body tissues such as blood vessels, cartilage and skin--even whole organs such as kidneys, livers and hearts--could become more widely available for transplants as a result of a patent issued recently to a Chicago company for a method to chill body tissues and organs well below freezing without forming ice crystals. The new process for tissue ''vitrification''---chilling tissue and organs to a disordered, glass-like solid without ice formation---was developed with support from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program and the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers have demonstrated that stem cell therapy repairs damaged heart tissue and aids recovery after heart attack. Most conventional therapies for myocardial infarction -- heart attack caused by suspension of blood flow -- help ensure damage to the heart doesn't progress or recur, but don't repair damage already done. Because embryonic stem cells can generate diverse cell types in the body, including heart cells, the Mayo Clinic researchers investigated whether transplantation of such stem cells could repopulate heart muscle scarred by heart attack and produce a beneficial long-term outcome.
Blood-making stem cells found in bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and some adult blood products have been used in transplants to treat cancers, leukemia and immune system disorders and to restore blood cell production compromised by chemotherapy and irradiation. But insufficient numbers of donor cells sometime limit success, especially with cord blood transplants. A new study suggests these stem cells can be enhanced in trafficking to the bone marrow and may increase transplant success, particularly in adults.
A single type of primitive stem cell transplanted from donor mice gave rise to both blood-forming and bone-forming cells in recipient mice. This finding, by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, suggests that this primitive cell could one day be the basis of new medical treatments to replace bone that has been lost to disease or injury, the researchers say.
A new study opens the door to the possibility of new treatments for children who suffer from biliary atresia, a deadly disease of infancy and the most common reason for liver transplantation in children. The new treatments could dramatically reduce the number of liver transplants performed on children every year.
