Karolinska: Recent years have seen many breakthroughs within
immunology and the effects of these are now being seen in clinics. At a
conference at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet we
will hear about how this new knowledge is being used to understand
diabetes and treat cancer. New possibilities are also opening up for
sorts of transplants – not just of internal organs but also of arms.
A few years ago it became possible to transplant an
arm from a deceased person onto someone who traumatically had lost a
limb. Stefan Schneeberger of Innsbruck Medical University, Austria, is
behind five arm transplants – each with very good results. Patients have
regained both sensation and motor function in the transplanted arm. He
will be present at the conference at Karolinska Institutet and will talk
about his experiences surgically and immunologically as well as
ethically.
Steven A. Rosenberg of the National
Institutes of Health, USA, is currently one of the most experienced
people in the world when it comes to treating cancer using white blood
cells. This method extracts the blood cells from the patient's body and
cultivates them to increase their tumour recognition function. They are
then re-injected into the body. One type of cancer treated this way is
malignant melanoma, which Rosenberg will be speaking about during the
symposium.
Rejection reactions represent a well-known problem during
transplants. One way to increase the body's tolerance of a new organ is
to simultaneously transplant hematopoietic cells (i.e. bone
marrow-derived cells). Hematopoietic cells are harvested from the
donor’s peripheral blood and selected with respect to certain cellular
characteristics. They are then introduced into the recipient's body
shortly after an organ transplant. One of the leading researchers
developing this method is John Scandling at Stanford University, USA,
and he will talk more about how this can be used during kidney
transplants.
Last year, Alex Karlsson-Parra at Uppsala
University Hospital was awarded the Athena Prize in Clinical Research
for a highly innovative method to treat cancer in, for example, the
liver or kidneys. He speaks of how the dendritic immune cells from
healthy blood donors can be used and injected directly into tumours, as a
form of therapeutic cancer vaccine, with astonishing results.
Many other elements of world-leading Swedish research will
be presented during the day, for example, research on beta cell
transplants for diabetes and liver cell transplants for congenital and
acquired liver diseases.
Programme
If you have any questions, please contact:
Erik Berglund, researcher and registrar in transplantation surgery
Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology
+46 (0)73-918 12 33
erik.berglund@ki.se
Sabina Bossi, Press Officer
+46 (0)8-524 860 66 or +46 (0)70-614 60 66
sabina.bossi@ki.se