purpose: to determine whether adding 2% topical cyclosporine (csa) to local and systemic steroids in treatment of endothelial corneal allograft rejection improves the outcome. methods: a prospective randomized treatment trial was carried out on 40 consecutive corneal graft recipients, presenting with the first episode of endothelial graft rejection in two groups. group one (20 patients) receive...

The anti-CTL-associated antigen 4 (anti-CTLA-4) antibody ipilimumab is the first agent to show improved survival in a randomized phase III trial that enrolled patients with metastatic melanoma. Studies are ongoing to identify mechanisms that elicit clinical benefit in the setting of anti-CTLA-4 therapy. We previously reported that treated patients had an increase in the frequency of T cells exp...

BACKGROUND Immunoprophylaxis with basiliximab (Simulect), an anti-interleukin-2-receptor (anti-IL-2R; CD25) chimeric monoclonal antibody, has been demonstrated to significantly reduce the incidence of acute cellular rejection in adult renal allograft recipients (32% vs. placebo, p < 0.01). METHODS An economic evaluation was conducted as part of a U.S. multi-center, randomized, double-blind, p...

BACKGROUND Simultaneous pancreas-kidney (SPK) transplantation is an accepted therapy for type 1 diabetic patients with end-stage renal disease. This study analyses the occurrence of rejection episodes in patients undergoing SPK. METHODS The study population was obtained from 205 patients enrolled in the Euro-SPK 001 study and randomized to receive tacrolimus- (n = 103) or cyclosporin microemu...

INTRODUCTION Indications for induction therapy is not consensual in living donors. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was compare no induction with thymoglobulin and basiliximab induction in the incidence of acute rejection in kidney transplantation with living donor. METHODS We select all cases of renal transplantation with living donor performed in Hospital das Clínicas de Botucatu da ...

OBJECTIVE Presence of anti-HLA antibodies has a well-known impact on kidney grafts survival; however their role in liver transplantation has not been fully elucidated. We conducted a 7-year prospective study to show correlation between presence of anti-HLA and anti-MICA antibodies and liver graft survival. METHODS Blood samples from 123 liver transplant recipients were collected during patien...

An update is provided on monoclonal antibodies (MAbs): concept, production, indications for the diagnosis and treatment of neoplastic diseases and autoimmune disorders, prevention of transplant rejection, and treatment of allergic diseases, autoimmune disease and other noninflammatory disorders such as coronary disease. Mention is also made of MAb use in the prevention of respiratory syncytial ...

T cells directed to endogenous tumor antigens are powerful mediators of tumor regression. Recent immunotherapy advances have identified effective interventions to unleash tumor-specific T-cell activity in patients who naturally develop them. Eliciting T-cell responses to a patient's individual tumor remains a major challenge. Radiation therapy can induce immune responses to model antigens expre...

Like cellular transplantation, gene therapy is often limited by immune rejection of the newly expressed antigen. In a model of gene transfer in muscle, delivery of the influenza hemagglutinin (HA) membrane protein by adeno-associated virus (AAV) is impaired by a strong immune response that leads to a rapid rejection of the transduced fibers. We show here that injection of HA-specific CD4+CD25+ ...