Translating tolerogenic therapies to the clinic-where do we stand?

Abstract

Manipulation of the immune system to prevent the development of a specific immune response is an ideal strategy to improve outcomes after transplantation. A number of experimental techniques exploiting central and peripheral tolerance mechanisms have demonstrated success, leading to the first early phase clinical trials for tolerance induc-tion.The first major strategy centers on the facilitation of donor-cell mixed chimerism in the transplant recipient with the use of bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell transplanta-tion. The second strategy, utilizing peripheral regulatory mechanisms, focuses on cellular therapy with regulatory T cells. This review examines the key studies and novel research directions in the field of immunological tolerance. © 2012 Issa and Wood.