Immunobiology of liver xenotransplantation

Liver xenotransplantation.

During the past 30 years orthotopic liver transplantation has become a highly successful form of surgical treatments. The significant advances achieved in this field have led to an increased demand for organs and created a wide gap between organ availability and organ supply. A wider availability of organs for transplantation would allow an expansions rather than a contraction of the indication...

Human liver xenotransplantation.

Loss of serum bicarbonate after discordant liver xenotransplantation.

I T IS A concern in liver xenotransplantation (XTx) that discordant combinations might not be sufficiently compatible for physiologic functioning in the recipient. Closer examination of the guinea pig(GP) to-rat liver XTx model uncovered potential incompatibilities in bile production between these species. GP (along with rabbits) have the greatest bile flow rate of all species studied.! Additio...

Xenotransplantation of hamster liver into Gunn rats reserves congenital hyperbilirubinemia.

THE Gunn rat is an animal model for Crigler-Najar syndrome. a rare form of congenital unconjugated nonhemolytic hyperbilirubinemia due to the absence of glucoronyl transferase. I.e It leads to deposition of bilirubin in the basal ganglia. culminating in precocious death of the patient. Because the uptake. conjugation. and excretion of bilirubin by hepatocytes involves specific carriers and enzy...

Clinical Trials and the Projected Future of Liver Xenotransplantation

The trial and error of the pioneering xenotransplant trials over the past three decades has defined the limitation of the species used. Success was tantalizingly close with the chimpanzee, baboon, and other primates. The use of more disparate species has been frustrated by the xenoantibody barrier. Future attempts at clinical xenotransplantation will be hampered by the consideration of the spec...