Gene therapy strategies to facilitate organ transplantation

Organ transplantation is now the definitive therapy for many forms of end-o rgan disease, but chronic allograft rejection, the side effects of chronic immunosuppressive therapy and the severe donor organ shortage continue to l imit its success. Gene therapy has the potential to prevent graft rejection by manipulating the immune response in the microenvironment of the graft o r by facilitating the induction of tolerance, Genetic manipulation of stem cells to create transgenic and/or knockout animals that could serve as orga n or cell donors could be combined with gene therapy approaches to overcome the problem of limited allogeneic donor organ supply.