Enhancing Cellular Therapies that Prolong Allograft Survival

In the works comprising this PhD, we have focused on improving the long-term survival of transplanted organs, known as “allografts,” by enhancing regulatory immune responses using cell therapy. Despite great advancements in pushing short-term allograft survival in the past decades, extending long-term survival has remained challenging. To address this challenge, the individual chapters of this thesis detail our efforts at consolidating the promise of cellular immunotherapy by:

• Creating a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of regulatory lymphocytes through fundamental and mechanistic studies;
• Elucidating the impact of cytokines in the pro- and anti-inflammatory arms of the immune system and their individual balance through clinical studies; and,
• Developing spatiotemporally controlled adjuvant delivery to promote lasting, antigen-specific immunoregulation through translational studies.

Overall, our findings suggest that cellular immunotherapies could markedly push survival rates of organ and tissue transplantation, and enhance the quality of life transplant recipients to offer them and their families better prospects than with chemical immunosuppressants.