Abstract

Although transplantation has been a standard medical practice for decades, the marked morbidity from the use of immunosuppressive drugs and poor long-term graft survival remain important limitations in the field. Achieving tolerance to transplanted organs should solve both problems, but has been an elusive goal. Recent advances in the human immunological toolbox have rekindled interest in studying the small number of transplant recipients who become tolerant to their grafts over time. The development of biomarkers of transplantation tolerance holds promise to improve the care of organ allograft recipients, to provide surrogate end points of tolerance induction strategies and to advance our understanding of the human immune response to both self and foreign antigens.

Author affiliations

1. Laurence A. Turka is at the Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 111 Clinical Research Building 415 Curie Boulevard, Philadelphia 19104, USA, and the Immune Tolerance Network, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
2. Robert I. Lechler is at the Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Medical School, King's College, London SE1 9R7, UK.

Correspondence to: Laurence A. Turka¹ Email: turka@mail.med.upenn.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.