Excerpt from Induction of Tolerance

Synonyms, Key Words, and Related Terms: holy grail of organ transplantation, immunologic tolerance, immunological tolerance, chimerism, mosaicism, freemartin, self antigens, self-antigens, allografts, thymic education, positive selection, negative selection, intrathymic tolerance, central tolerance, peripheral tolerance, apoptosis, clone deletion, privileged sites, activation-induced cell death, AICD, passive cell death, PCD, clonal anergy, co-stimulatory molecules, costimulatory molecules, homeostasis, organ transplantation, autoimmune, autoimmunity, immunology of transplant rejection, immunosuppression, full tolerance, partial tolerance, incomplete tolerance, donor-specific tolerance, prope tolerance

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Immunologic tolerance is a state of immune unresponsiveness specific to a particular antigen or set of antigens induced by previous exposure to that antigen or set.

Induction of immunologic tolerance has been achieved and studied in numerous laboratory animal models, but it remains an elusive goal in clinical organ transplantation and in the management of autoimmune disease in humans.

Transplant tolerance is defined as a state of donor-specific unresponsiveness without a need for ongoing pharmacologic immunosuppression. Transplantation tolerance could eliminate many of the adverse events associated with immunosuppressive agents. A strategy to develop tolerance would also be of value in autoimmune diseases, such as juvenile-onset diabetes mellitus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Safe, reliable strategies for the induction of full tolerance have not yet been developed. However, the induction of partial tolerance, in which lower-than-conventional amounts of ongoing pharmacologic immunosuppression are needed, has been demonstrated with several regimens.

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