This post is from a suggested group
New Transplant Approach Resets the Immune System to Stop Type 1 Diabetes: Stanford Researchers Achieve Immune Tolerance Using Combined Blood Stem Cell and Pancreatic Islet Cell Graft in Mice
The field of transplantation is constantly seeking ways to overcome the fundamental challenges of organ rejection and the need for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs. A groundbreaking study by Stanford Medicine researchers has demonstrated a potential cure for Type 1 diabetes in mice by successfully inducing immunological tolerance through a combined transplant of blood stem cells and pancreatic islet cells from an immunologically mismatched donor. This innovative technique involves a gentler pre-transplant conditioning regimen followed by the dual transplant, which leads to the formation of a hybrid immune system (chimerism) that not only accepts the donated cells but also prevents the host's immune system from attacking them, without the destructive effects of graft-versus-host disease (GvHD).