Researchers from the University of Iowa and the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said that using embryonic stem cells might reduce transplantation rejection. The U.S medical scientists said the immune-defense cells influenced by embryonic stem cell-derived cells helped prevent the rejection of hearts transplanted into mice and without the use of immunosuppressive drugs. Immunosuppressive drugs are used to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs and tissues such as bone marrow, heart, kedney and liver. It also treats autoimmune diseases or diseases that are most likely of autoimmune origin such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis etc..

Bone Marrow Transplant - Image Credit ADAM

Now, every patient who needs marrow or solid organ transplantation must take immunosuppressive drugs; which is known to have many side effects nearly as severe as the disease they have.

“The idea behind the study is to ‘prep’ a recipient’s immune system to make it receptive to the eventual organ or bone marrow donor’s genetic makeup,” said Dr. Nicholas Zavazava, a professor of internal medicine and also a researcher and staff physician at the medical center. “The approach involves taking embryonic stem cells with the same genetic background as the donor from which the organ or bone marrow ultimately will come and adapting them into another type of stem cell that can be injected into the recipient.”

Source – UPI