Permanent Organ Transplant Rejection? May Not! Recently, an article named Spontaneous Restoration o

Recently, an article named Spontaneous Restoration of Transplantation Tolerance after Acute Rejection was published on Nature Communication by researchers from University of Chicago. They found that the existence of immune tolerance in the process of organ transplantation is not permanent. The rejection may also happen again for patients who had formed immune tolerance, and regulatory T cells(Tregs) play an important role in the formation of immune tolerance.

About organ transplantation:

It’s really a wonderful assumption that an organ from one person can be put into another one’s body. The development of HLA research provides the essence and basis to the organ transplantation. Every individual may has its own HLA profile, it will decide its ability to enhance a protective immune response. So, many services like HLA Sequencing which can deal with differences of HLA genes came into being. It contributes a lot to organ transplantation’s possibility of success.(want more information about HLA Sequencing please contact info@cd-genomics.com or click CD Genomics.)However, after an organ transplantation, some patients often need to take drugs for a lifetime. Others who had been induced to form immune tolerance may also have the chance to be lead to rejection by some events such as bacteria infection.

The process:

During the process, the researchers did a heart transplant operation for a mouse. After that, they induced it to form immune tolerance. Two months later, They turned on the switch of the rejection by bacterial infection. After a week the researchers did a second heart transplant operation for another mouse by using the heart provided by the donor with same genes. The heart was well-accepted and function well during the research. And the similar results went for another experiment. But after removing the regulatory T cells before the second transplantation, they found the new heart was rejected by the host.

The result:

The result of the study shows that patients formed immune tolerance can protect the transplant organs by short-term drugs after the rejection. The immune tolerance will recover after a time. That means we may have the chance to reduce the possibility of death after an organ transplantation.