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Organ transplantation—how much of the promise has been realized?

Nature Medicine volume 11, pages 605–613 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Since the introduction of organ transplantation into medical practice, progress and optimism have been abundant. Improvements in immunosuppressive drugs and ancillary care have led to outstanding short-term (1–3-year) patient and graft survival rates. This success is mitigated by several problems, including poor long-term (>5-year) graft survival rates, the need for continual immunosuppressive medication and the discrepancy between the demand for organs and the supply. Developing methods to induce transplant tolerance, as a means to improve graft outcomes and eliminate the requirement for immunosuppression, and expanding the pool of organs for transplantation are the major challenges of the field.

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Figure 1: Mechanisms of graft rejection.
Figure 2: Selected strategies for tolerance induction now in clinical trials.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank their colleagues for many helpful discussions and regret that space constraints prevented them from citing a number of excellent papers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guy's King's and St. Thomas's Medical School, King's College London, Hodgkin Building, Guy's Campus, London, SE1 9RT, UK

    Robert I Lechler

  2. Departments of Surgery and Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, MGH East, Building 149-5102, 13th Street, Boston, 02129, Massachusetts, USA

    Megan Sykes

  3. Departments of Surgery and Immunology, University of Pittsburgh, 200 Lothrop Street, Biomedical Science Tower W1544, Pittsburgh, 15213, Pennsylvania, USA

    Angus W Thomson

  4. Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 700 Clinical Research Building, 415 Curie Boulevard, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Laurence A Turka

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Lechler, R., Sykes, M., Thomson, A. et al. Organ transplantation—how much of the promise has been realized?. Nat Med 11, 605–613 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1251

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