Hi.
Thanks for asking in Healthcare Magic.

Fibrosis and immune rejection are the long term complications of kidney transplantation. The immunosuppressive drugs like Cyclosporin and monoclonal antibodies like Muromonab -CD3 given to prevent graft rejection act by preventing the cell mediated immunity (T cell function) and these needs to be given for a long period. The side effects of these drugs are many. By suppressing the immune mechanism the drugs like Cyclosporin can result in oppurtunistic infections causing graft rejection. Long term survival of transplanted kidney has not improved over the years with these immunosupressive drugs.

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) are multipotent stem cells that can differentiate in to a variety of cell types. These cells have immunomodulatory (not suppressive) action. They are immune regulators and promote immune tolerance. Also they are collected from ones own blood and transfused (Autologous transplant) thereby improving the immune mechanism.

In many studies, MSC given at weekly intervals in people after renal transplantation has been reported to improve the survival rate of the transplanted kidney. Although this is promising, since this is a new approach, long term survival rate of the transplanted kidney and the long term side effects of MSC is not known.

I hope this helps. Please address to me if you have any further concerns.
Regards.

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Dear XXXXXX.
Welcome back.

The goal of stem cell therapy is to replace the damaged cells in organs that have lost their ability for self repair. Although tissue culture evidence indicates the capacity of the stem cells to generate in to a variety of cell types like myoctes (muscle cells), chondrocytes (bone cells), cardimyoocytes (heart cells), adipocytes(fat cells), hepatocytes (liver cells) and neurons it is still unclear how these transformed cells will integrate in to organs, survive and function after transplantation inside the body.

Studies report that they probably fuse with the organ cells. Organ stem cell regeneration is not a simple process like the blood cell (hematopoietic stem cell) transplantation where in the stem cells simly multiply within the bone marrow and function.

The 3 therapeutic concepts of stem cell transplantation aim at
1. Direct injection of stem cells in to the damaged organ.
2. Outside (in vitro) differentiation (transformation) followed by transplantation in to the organ (eg. pancreatic islet cells in Diabetes, cardiomyocytes in heart problem).
3. facilitating repair process of the damaged organ.

The use of stem cells in regeneration of organs like kidneys is still being studied as many problems like ethical issues and uncontrolled migration of transplanted cells and it is yet to become a clinical reality. Presently, as far as my knowledge goes, MSC are used to modify the immune response in transplantation.

I hope I have answered your query.
Regards.

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