Cardiac allograft tolerance can be achieved in nonhuman primates by donor bone marrow and kidney cotransplantation.

Long-term, immunosuppression-free allograft survival has been induced in human and nonhuman primate (NHP) kidney recipients after nonmyeloablative conditioning and donor bone marrow transplantation (DBMT), resulting in transient mixed hematopoietic chimerism. However, the same strategy has consistently failed in NHP heart transplant recipients. Here, we investigated whether long-term heart allograft survival could be achieved by cotransplanting kidneys from the same donor.

Vascular endothelial cells derived from transgene-free pig induced pluripotent stem cells for vascular tissue engineering.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) hold great promise for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases through cell-based therapies, but these therapies require extensive preclinical testing that is best done in species-in-species experiments. Pigs are a good large animal model for these tests due to the similarity of their cardiovascular system to humans. However, a lack of adequate pig iPSCs (piPSCs) that are analogous to human iPSCs has greatly limited the potential usefulness of this model system.

Detailed surgical description of porcine vascularized thymus lobe transplantation.

Background: Despite advances in immunosuppressive therapies, chronic rejection and immunosuppression-related complications remain significant challenges in transplantation. Developing transplantation tolerance through thymus transplantation may offer a solution. This paper details our technique for procuring and transplanting porcine vascularized thymic lobes (VTL), which can be utilized to study and research allogeneic and xenogeneic transplantation models in large animals.

Durable mixed chimerism may permit subsequent immunosuppression-free intestinal transplantation-A proof-of-principle study.

Intestinal transplantation (ITx) is the definitive treatment for intestinal failure but has the highest rejection rate among solid organ transplants, requiring high doses of immunosuppressive medication, which is associated with high rates of infection, graft-versus-host disease, and malignancy. Transplant tolerance would overcome the need for long-term immunosuppression (ISP). Using nonmyeloablative conditioning, our laboratory has developed a novel swine model of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) that produces durable mixed chimerism (MC) and immune tolerance without toxicity.