"More than 50 percent of lung-transplant recipients experience a rejection of their new lung within five years of receiving it, yet the reason why this is such a prevalent complication has remained a medical mystery. Now, a new Northwestern Medicine study published in JCI Insight has found that, following transplant and in chronic disease states, abnormal cells emerge and "conversations" between them drive the development of lung damage and transplant rejection."
"These findings not only help answer why rejection occurs, but they also have spurred immediate exploration of new drugs to treat transplant rejection and other lung-scarring diseases. "Chronic lung-transplant rejection has been a 'black box.' We knew it happened but did not exactly know why," said corresponding author Ankit Bharat, MBSS, chief of Thoracic Surgery in the Department of Surgery and executive director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute. "Our study provides the first comprehensive cellular and molecular roadmap of the disease.""
More than 50 percent of lung-transplant recipients experience rejection of the new lung within five years. Chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD) remains the leading cause of death after the first year of transplantation. Approximately 3,000 to 3,500 lung transplants occur annually in the U.S., with more than 69,000 performed worldwide. There are currently no effective treatments for CLAD once it develops, leaving re-transplantation as the only option. After evaluating almost 1.6 million cells, researchers distinguished abnormal donor-derived structural cells from recipient immune cells and found harmful cell-to-cell conversations that drive lung damage and rejection. Findings have spurred exploration of new drugs to treat transplant rejection and lung-scarring diseases.
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