Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/DSBPxskDW56/Organ transplantation is a miracle for those with failing kidneys, hearts, or livers.  With those transplants comes the need for lifelong immunosuppression and the risk of infection as well as graft failure due to an immune attack.With the hope of eliminating the need for this immunosuppression, Stanford transplant immunologists and developmental biologists have developed a transplantation technique employing an induced hybrid or chimeric immune system in the recipient. They now publish their studies using this system to successfully transplant insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells in diabetic mice.The researchers performed the dual transplantation of the pancreatic islet cells but also white cell-forming stem cells from the genetically-mismatched donor. To permit the stem cells to escape rejection and develop the hybrid immune system, the recipient animals received a one-time pretreatment with low dose radiation and several immunosuppressive agents.All of