by Yoshitaro Shindo  and Mazhar A. Kanak

Received: 29 March 2018;  Published: 22 June 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1802013

Islet cell transplantation is a developing treatment for patients suffering from severe Type-1 diabetes. The long-term insulin independence after islet cell transplantation has been difficult to achieve, and this has been linked to several factors. One of the major cause of poor long-term outcome is inflammation surrounding the islets. Inflammation in islets is caused at several stages, donor induced, during organ preservation, islet isolation stress, peri-transplant inflammation or instant blood mediated inflammat [...]

by Victoria Gómez-Dos-Santos  , Vital Hevia-Palacios  , Edurne Ramos-Muñoz  , María Laura García-Bermejo  , Esperanza Macarena Rodríguez-Serrano  , Ana Saiz-González  , Jose Manuel Del Rey-Sánchez  and Francisco Javier Burgos-Revilla

Received: 22 March 2018;  Published: 21 June 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1802012

Background: Extended criteria donors and donation after cardiac death donors provide organs which tend to be more sensitive to the stress of preservation. There is a lack of evidence about the potential role of oxygen in preservation techniques, and literature comparing oxygenated and non-oxygenated techniques is very limited. The aim of the study was to compare HMP with oxygen versus HMP without oxygen in a pig model of kidney auto-transplantation (KT) reproducing conditions of DCD. We have also set up miRNAs expr [...]

by Nicholas Lim  , Gregory Beilman  and Timothy Pruett

Received: 21 March 2018;  Published: 12 June 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1802011

Portal hypertension often occurs transiently with injection of islet cells into the portal system during total pancreatectomy-islet autotransplantation (TPIAT). We describe a TPIAT patient with non-cirrhotic portal hypertension (NCPH) two years after surgery initially identified with esophageal varices on upper endoscopy. The underlying mechanism for the development of NCPH after TPIAT is unclear but infectious and immune-related pathways have been proposed. Management of NCPH is primarily treatment of complication [...]

by Preeti Chhabra  and Kenneth L. Brayman

Received: 02 April 2018;  Published: 05 June 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1802010

Pancreas or islet transplantation is the only reliable cure for Type 1 Diabetes. However, shortage of donor tissue supply, longitudinal graft attrition due to innate and adaptive immunity and the recurrence of autoimmunity, as well as the harmful side-effects of chronic immunosuppressive therapy limit the wide-spread acceptance of islet transplantation as a mainstream cure for autoimmune diabetes. Herein, preclinical and clinical stem-cells based research approaches aimed at obtaining large quantities of islets for [...]

by Anita Verma  , Katharina Sophia Weigel  , Sim You Kuan Dexter  and Anil Dhawan

Received: 26 March 2018;  Published: 29 May 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1802009

Invasive fungal infections (IFI) remain an important cause of morbidity and mortality, especially in hospitalized and immunocompromised or critically ill patients. The incidence of IFIs has been declining in liver transplant recipients (LTR). This is likely due to the evolving immunosuppressive drug regimens, improved surgical techniques and targeted antifungal prophylaxis. However, IFI still contribute to high mortality and are associated with high economic burden due to consumption of costly newer antifungal agen [...]

by Masayuki Shimoda  and Shinichi Matsumoto

Received: 25 February 2018;  Published: 25 April 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1802008

More than 10 million people worldwide suffer from type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Allogeneic islet transplantation has been established to prevent severe hypoglycemia in unstable T1DM patients although there is a serious shortage of donors. Islet xenotransplantation using porcine islets is a promising solution to this issue. Porcine islets offer several advantages over human islets, including unlimited and on-demand supplies, a higher quality of islets from healthy donors, greater safety with designated pathogen-f [...]

by Mrudula Munagala  and Anita Phancao

Received: 31 August 2017;  Published: 11 January 2018;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1801007

Heart transplant remains the gold standard therapy for patients with end stage heart disease and offers improved survival and quality of life. Significant progress has been achieved in improving one-year mortality after heart transplantation. Nonetheless, long-term graft survival has not changed significantly over the past few decades. Long term survival of heart transplant recipients is limited by chronic rejection, cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV), and malignancy. CAV is a major contributor for graft failure [...]

by Pål-Dag Line

Received: 20 December 2017;  Published: 24 December 2017;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1704006

by Rama Bindu Manchikalapudi

Received: 31 May 2017;  Published: 28 September 2017;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1703005

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy is one of the leading causes of death following the first 5 years after orthotopic heart transplantation along with late graft failure, likely secondary to undiagnosed CAV. Currently there is no single medical treatment available for this condition except modification of risk factors and immunosuppression. Retrasplantation remains the hope for this entity with some limitations.

by Sheri Tran  and Mark M Fuster

Received: 16 July 2017;  Published: 12 September 2017;  doi: 10.21926/obm.transplant.1703004

The risk for developing a variety of malignancies is significantly elevated in the setting of lung transplantation. Malignancy remains among the three major causes of death in post-transplant recipients, and the relatively high risk of cancer development as well as metastatic aggression pose special threats to this population due to the need for continued immunosuppression. A variety of risks such as tobacco use and inflammatory lung diseases that led to the lung pathology prompting lung transplantation, in additio [...]