Xenotransplantation : Basic Research and Clinical Applications

Xenotransplantation might well provide a revolutionary way of augmenting the function of diseased tissues or replacing organs. This possibility has been advanced by newly acquired understanding of the biological and immunological obstacles to conducting transplantation between species. In Xenotransplantation: Basic Research and Clinical Applications, internationally recognized scientists, clinicians, and technologists review and explain the fundamental molecular and cellular biology that has been applied to the emerging field of transplant immunology and xenotransplantation and what impact these advances might optimally have on medicine and science. The authoritative experts writing here-many of whom made the basic discoveries underlying the recent advances-examine the biological and immunological hurdles to xenotransplantation, illuminating how the immune system interacts with the xenograft, and laying a practical foundation for the use of genetic engineering and animal transplants in the treatment of human disease. Comprehensive and authoritative, Xenotransplantation: Basic Research and Clinical Applications provides basic and clinical investigators, as well as transplant surgeons, with today's most thorough and up-to-date compendium of vital information on all the scientific and technological aspects of xenotransplantation. The transplantation of organs, tissues, or cells between individuals of different species has been of increasing interest in recent years because the use of animals as organ and tissue donors as a source of transplants would overcome the severe and worsening shortage of human organs available for transplantation.