The NIH has made good its promise issued this May to award $130 million for research designed to bring tolerance induction for organ transplants into clinical trials (Nature Med. 5, 470; 1999). The award, which is one of the largest grants ever from the NIH for clinical research, will fund research aimed at training the immune system to ignore transplanted organs, yet still attack invading pathogens. The procedure has proven successful in laboratory animals, and many transplant immunologists felt the time was right to bring the procedure to the clinic.

The project, known as the Collaborative Network for Clinical Research on Immune Tolerance, will be headed by Jeffrey Bluestone from the University of Chicago, and will involve nearly 40 research institutions from the US, Australia, Germany and the UK. Tolerogenic approaches will be tested on recipients of kidney transplants, as well as those receiving transplanted human islet cells to treat type I diabetes. The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation will contribute an additional $14 million to the project.