Immunological characteristics of pancreas transplantation: review and our experimental experience.
Pancreas and islet transplantation is the only treatment that can cure type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM). With the recent advances of operative procedure and immunosuppression, pancreas graft survivals have become better than before, but some problems still remain. It is extremely difficult to establish tolerance and to reverse rejection once it has been initiated because the pancreas graft itself has a strong immunogenicity. It is also known that pancreatic graft failure is sometimes due to autoimmune recurrence. In the clinical situation, however, these immunologic events actually coexist within the pancreatic graft. Thus, it is rather difficult to analyze each of them independently, but possible to delineate each of these immunologic mechanisms with using animal models of type 1 DM such as BB (BioBreeding) rats or NOD (nonobese diabetic) mice. In the current study, we reviewed the immunological characteristics in pancreas transplantation (PTx) based on our experimental experiences together with that of others and investigated the possibility of tolerance induction in PTx.
Ito
Toshinori
T
Department of Surgery (E1), Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Suita, Japan. juki@surg1.med.osaka-u.ac.jp
Uchikoshi
Fumihiro
F
Tori
Masayuki
M
Miao
Gang
G
Tanaka
Satonori
S
Maeda
Akira
A
Akamaru
Yuusuke
Y
Matsuda
Hikaru
H
Nozawa
Masumi
M
D000818:Animals; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006084:Graft Rejection; D006801:Humans; D007108:Immune Tolerance; D051379:Mice; D016688:Mice, Inbred NOD; D010179:Pancreas / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D016035:Pancreas Transplantation / Q000276:immunology*; D051381:Rats; D011913:Rats, Inbred BB; D014181:Transplantation Immunology