Transplant Breakthrough

Organ transplants without long-term anti-rejection drugs? That's been the "Holy Grail" of transplant immunologists for a quarter-century.

UAB researchers are reporting the first success in inducing this phenomenon in a series of non-human primates whose induced insulin-dependent diabetes has been reversed with pancreatic islet cell transplants.

Achievement of this "operational tolerance" in monkeys is expected to lead to clinical trials in humans, says Judith M. Thomas, Ph.D., lead author of the article in the June issue of the journal Diabetes. "One drug to deplete T-cells and another to stop inflammatory processes were included in a two-week regimen beginning the day of transplant to induce tolerance. We report subjects off insulin and immunosuppressive drugs for more than a year."

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