title: Heart allograft tolerance induced and maintained by vascularized hind-limb transplant in rats.
abstract: Organ/tissue transplantation has become an effective therapy for end-stage diseases. However, immunosuppression after transplantation may cause severe side effects. Donor-specific transplant tolerance was proposed to solve this problem. In this study, we report a novel method for inducing and maintaining heart allograft tolerance rats. First, we induced indefinite vascularized hind-limb allograft survival with a short-term antilymphocyte serum + Cyclosporine A treatment. Peripheral blood chimerism disappeared 6-7 weeks after immunosuppression was withdrawn. Then the recipients accepted secondary donor-strain skin and heart transplantation 200 days following vascularized hind-limb transplantation without any immunosuppression, but rejected third party skin allografts, a status of donor-specific tolerance. The ELISPOT results suggested a mechanism of clone deletion. These findings open new perspectives for the role of vascularized hind-limb transplant in the induction and maintenance of organ transplantation tolerance.
authors.affiliation: Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
authors.forename: Quan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Atsunori
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nakao
authors.forename: Wensheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Vijay
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gorantla
authors.forename: Xin Xiao
authors.initials: XX
authors.lastname: Zheng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000961:Antilymphocyte Serum / Q000008:administration & dosage; D016572:Cyclosporine / Q000008:administration & dosage; D006085:Graft Survival / Q000187:drug effects; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000276:immunology*; D006614:Hindlimb / Q000276:immunology* / Q000637:transplantation; D007165:Immunosuppression Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D007519:Isoantigens / Q000276:immunology; D008297:Male; D018919:Neovascularization, Physiologic; D051381:Rats; D011917:Rats, Inbred Lew; D016038:Skin Transplantation / Q000276:immunology*; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D000961:Antilymphocyte Serum; D007519:Isoantigens; D016572:Cyclosporine