Rafael Matesanz
Creator and founder of the National Transplant Organisation.
At the present time it can be said that the infusion of different types of immunomodulating cells from the donor, whether living (kidney or liver) or cadaveric (different solid organs), is one of the hot topics in transplant research, both to achieve better tolerance and less organ rejection in the short term and to reduce or eliminate immunosuppressive drugs in the medium and long term and thus achieve immunotolerance, the panacea of transplantation.
The problem is that we do not know which type of cell is best, as well as the pattern of administration. The authors propose the administration of regulatory dendritic cells in one type of transplant, living donor liver transplantation, in a clinical trial in a still preliminary phase in which they have so far proven the safety of the method and have verified that one year later a series of immunological alterations induced by the dendritic cells are maintained, which could be indicative of a reduced need for immunosuppressants or even their withdrawal. The line of work has a certain amount of support from animal experimentation, but logically still lacks the clinical confirmation that would mean being able to effectively withdraw the immunosuppressants without the organ being rejected.
In the meantime, this is a good work in an interesting line of work, but its conclusions are preliminary and will have to be verified with the extension of the trial and future research.