Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

Kathryn J Wood, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

When tissue is transplanted between individuals who are not genetically identical it is rejected by the recipients immune system. Powerful immunosuppressive drugs are used to prevent transplant rejection in clinical transplantation.

Secondary article
Article Contents
. Introduction . Role of Tissue Typing . Immunosuppressive Agents . Reducing Immunogenicity of Grafts . Induction of Transplantation Tolerance

Introduction
Transplantation of cells, tissue or an organ within the same species between individuals who are not genetically identical (allografts) or between species (xenografts) (Table 1) almost inevitably triggers activation of the immune system. The transplanted tissue is often referred to as the graft and, if active steps are not taken to control the immune response, the transplanted tissue will be destroyed or rejected. Studies on the behaviour of tumour grafts by Little and Tyzzer, amongst others, led Gorer to propose the concept of graft rejection as long ago as 1938. Recognition that the immune system was responsible came later when Gibson and Medawar clearly identied specicity and memory as hallmark features of the rejection response. Work over the past 50 years has elucidated many of the cells and molecules that are involved, but there is still much to learn. Graft rejection is a complex process. Many factors, including the nature of the tissue transplanted, the genetic disparity in other words, the histoincompatibility or mismatching between the donor and recipient the site of transplantation and the immune status of the recipient, all contribute to determine the character of the rejection response. The terms hyperacute, acute and chronic rejection are often used to describe dierent aspects of rejection response. Hyperacute rejection occurs when the recipients immune system has been sensitized to the donor before transplantation. Sensitization is often accompanied by the presence of antibodies and memory T cells reactive with donor molecules. If the recipient has been sensitized to

donor antigens, the graft is rejected very rapidly, often within minutes after transplantation. Hyperacute rejection of an allograft occurs only very rarely in clinical transplantation today. Transplant recipients are always screened before transplantation to ensure that they have not been sensitized against the donor by pregnancy or blood transfusion, or when receiving a second transplant because of rejection of the rst graft. Hyperacute rejection is one of the major barriers that need to be overcome before xenotransplantation will be successful, as the vast majority of humans have preformed natural antibodies reactive with pig tissue, in particular a carbohydrate structure that is present in pig but not human cells. Acute rejection is the term used to describe the immune response that occurs during the early time period, usually within the rst 36 months, after transplantation of a genetically mismatched allograft. Chronic rejection describes the progressive functional deterioration of an allograft occurring months or years after transplantation.

Role of Tissue Typing

Transplants are accepted spontaneously only when the donor and recipient are genetically identical (i.e. identical twins). Any degree of genetic disparity or histoincompatibility between the donor and recipient will trigger rejection because the immune system can recognize and respond to the incompatible molecules.

Table 1 Dierent types of tissue transplantation Terminology Autograft Isograft Allograft Xenograft Denition Tissue transplanted from one part of the body to another (e.g. skin grafts in burns patients, vascular grafts) Tissue transplanted between genetically identical members of the same species (e.g. grafts between identical twins, grafts between members of the same inbred strain of mouse or rat) Tissue transplanted between nonidentical members of the same species (e.g. grafts between genetically disparate humans, grafts between dierent inbred strains) Tissue transplanted between individuals of dierent species (e.g. pig to human, rat to mouse)

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Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

Histocompatibility genes and the molecules or antigens they encode are classied as major or minor depending on where the genes are located in the genome. If the gene for a particular histocompatibility antigen maps to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), the molecule is referred to as a major histocompatibility antigen or MHC antigen for short. If the gene is encoded outside the MHC, the antigen is referred to as a minor histocompatibility antigen. All histocompatibility genes are polymorphic. In other words, many variant forms or alleles of each gene, and hence of the molecule the gene encodes, are present in the population as a whole. In humans the MHC is called human leucocyte antigen (HLA) complex. As part of the human genome project the HLA complex has been sequenced (The MHC Sequencing Consortium, 1999). Of the many genes present in the complex, there are two families of genes that code for cell surface molecules known as the HLA class I and II molecules (Figure 1). Some of the class I and II molecules have been well characterized and are called HLA-A, HLAB and HLA-C and HLA-DR, HLA-DQ and HLA-DP respectively. Around 100 HLA-A, 200 HLA-B and 50 HLA-C functional class I alleles have been described to date. For class II molecules, where the genes for both the a and b chain of each molecule (known as A and B genes respectively) are encoded by the MHC (Figure 1) around 200 HLA-DRB1, one HLA-DRA, 30 HLA-DQB1, 30 HLA-DQB1, 20 HLA-DQA1 and 100 HLA-DPB1 alleles have been identied. The techniques of tissue typing are used to identify the combination of HLA-A, B, C, DR, DQ and DP alleles that are present in any one individual. The combination of alleles is often described as the individuals tissue or HLA type. Matching the organ donor and recipient for HLA antigens has a marked benet on graft survival. The degree of HLA matching required is dependent on the tissue or organ transplanted. For bone marrow transplants it is critically important to match the donor and recipient for all typed HLA molecules. For this reason large registries of millions of people who have been tissue typed and are willing to act as bone marrow donors have been established. In this way, when a patient needs a bone marrow transplant, a donor who is as closely matched as possible can be found very quickly.
Class II D Class III B C Class I A

For recipients of solid organ grafts, such as kidney, heart and liver, the eects of HLA matching or more correctly mismatching on graft survival are organ dependent. Most centres focus on the tissue type of the donor and the recipient at three loci: HLA-A, B and DR for matching purposes. For recipients of a transplant from a living donor, excellent graft survival is seen when the recipient and donor are matched for HLA. Although excellent graft survival is also achieved with organs from cadaver donors when they are HLA matched with the recipient this degree of matching would be possible for the majority of patients only if organs were shared between centres worldwide. As this would be impractical, it is fortunate that many studies have shown that excellent graft survival can be achieved with modern immunosuppressive drugs when the donor and recipient are matched for some but not all HLA antigens. When graft survival data are analysed, a hierarchy in the strength of the dierent HLA loci to trigger rejection can be identied. HLA-DR antigens have been shown to be the strongest triggers of rejection, followed by HLA-B and DQ. Analysis of survival data for kidney allografts collected by dierent transplant centres around the world has shown that, if the donor and recipient are mismatched for HLA-DRB1, this has a negative eect on graft survival (Figure 2) (Morris et al., 1999). In other words, graft survival is less good in the long term in patients

DP DQ DR

Figure 1 Outline map of genes coding for human leucocyte antigen (HLA) molecules on the short arm of chromosome 6.

Figure 2 Transplant survival rate in recipients mismatched for donor human leucocyte antigen (HLA) A, B and DR. Reproduced from Morris et al. (1999), with permission.

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Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

who receive a kidney from a donor mismatched for HLADRB1 than in patients who receive a kidney from a donor who is matched for HLA-DRB1. Analyses of graft survival data can be found on several transplantation Web sites (see below). Many minor histocompatibility antigen systems must exist in humans and their inuence on graft rejection may be signicant (Simpson et al., 1998). For example, a small number of kidney grafts transplanted between HLAidentical siblings undergo rejection episodes, which occasionally lead to graft loss. Dierences in minor histocompatibility antigens between the donor and recipient are thought to trigger rejection in this situation. In bone marrow transplantation, mismatching for minor antigens can lead to graft-versus-host disease, and this has resulted in the characterization of a small number of minor antigens in human, HA15. However, in general, minor antigens are poorly characterized and, without better tools to characterize the polymorphic genes that lie outside the MHC, it is dicult to determine the impact of mismatching for minor antigens on graft survival in most situations.

Immunosuppressive Agents
Immunosuppressive agents are used to control the immune response after transplantation of an HLA-mismatched graft. If no immunosuppression is used, the graft will be rejected. After transplantation patients need to take immunosuppressive drugs continuously to ensure that the immune system is adequately suppressed, allowing the

graft to survive and function for as long as possible. From the early 1960s azathioprine, a relatively nonspecic inhibitor of cell proliferation, and steroids which are anti-inammatory provided the basis for immunosuppressive therapy in clinical renal transplantation. Subsequently a number of new immunosuppressive drugs has been developed such that today transplant patients are treated with a cocktail of immunosuppressive agents to ensure that the immune response to the graft is very tightly controlled throughout the posttransplant course. The development of drugs for use in clinical transplantation is outlined in Table 2. For more detailed information on each of the immunosuppressive drugs outlined below, see the texts listed under Further Reading. Dierent immunosuppressive drugs target the immune response at various points as it develops after transplantation (Figure 2). As a result, some of the drugs can be used eectively in combinations to try to target the response at multiple points to ensure that the immunosuppression achieved is as eective as possible. Cyclosporin A (CsA), most commonly used in combination with other immunosuppressive agents, has become the immunosuppressive drug used by most transplant centres. CsA was rst shown to have potent immunosuppressive properties by Borel and colleagues in 1976 and, as a result of promising data from the early clinical trials, it was developed for clinical use. Although cyclosporin is a potent immunosuppressive drug, it is not without side eects, the most serious of which is nephrotoxicity. As a consequence all newer immunosuppressive protocols that use cyclosporin in combination with other drugs are designed with

Table 2 Development of immunosuppressive agents that are in clinical use Mechanism of action 1955 1965 Steroids Azathioprine 1965 1975 Polyclonal antithymocyte globulin (ATG) or antilymphocyte globulin (ALG) 1975 1985 Cyclosporin A 1985 1995 Anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody Tacrolimus Mycophenolate mofetil 1995 to present Anti-CD25 monoclonal antibodies (IL-2R a chain) Sirolimus
IL, interleukin; IMPDH, inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase.
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Anti-inammatory Antiproliferative Leucocyte depletion Inhibits IL-2 gene transcription T-cell activation, opsonization and depletion Inhibits IL-2 gene transcription Inhibits IMPDH Inhibits IL-2 function Inhibits cytokine-mediated signal transduction

Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

the aim of using lower doses of cyclosporin to reduce the incidence of nephrotoxicity. The mechanism of action of CsA has been elucidated. The drug binds intracellularly to the immunophilin, cyclophilin, a molecule that normally plays a role in protein folding. The CsAcyclophilin complex then binds to the calcineurincalmodulin complex and inhibits the phosphorylation of a transcription factor, NF-AT (nuclear factor of activated T cells). NF-AT is required for transcription of genes whose products, including interleukin 2 (IL-2), play a role in early T-cell activation. CsA therefore acts to block T-cell activation at a very early point in the triggering process (Figure 3). Tacrolimus, often still called FK506, the name the drug was given when it was rst investigated, acts at a similar point in the cell cycle to CsA (Figure 3). Consequently it is also an inhibitor of T-cell proliferation but it is about 100 times more potent than CsA. Tacrolimus binds to the immunophilin FK-binding protein 12 (FKBP12) within the cytoplasm of the cell. This drugimmunophilin complex can also bind to the calcineurincalmodulin complex, and this results in the inhibition of transcription factor activity as described above. As might be expected, tacrolimus has been reported to have a similar side-eect prole to CsA, including nephrotoxicity and neurotoxicity. To date, tacrolimus has been used primarily as an immunosuppressive agent in liver transplant patients, but its use in patients transplanted with other organs is increasing. Tacrolimus has also been used with considerable success to rescue patients who are experiencing rejection that is resistant to the action of steroids and/or antilymphocyte agents (antithymocyte globulin (ATG) or OKT3). Sirolimus or rapamycin is a new immunosuppressive agent that has recently been approved for use in clinical transplantation. It is also a potent inhibitor of T-cell proliferation, but acts a later point in the cell cycle (Figure 3) and, importantly, has eects on B cells in addition to T cells. Interestingly, rapamycin binds to the same immunophilin as tacrolimus, FKBP12. However, sirolimus does not block the transcription of early activation genes such as IL-2 but rather disrupts the IL-2 receptor (IL-2R) signal transduction pathway the rejection response downstream of IL-2 production. Mycophenolate mofetil is a potent immunosuppressive agent that inhibits the enzyme inosine monophosphate
G0 Rest G1 Interphase Rapamycin Cyclosporin A FK506
Figure 3 Stages of the cell cycle affected by immunosuppressive drugs.

S DNA synthesis Azathioprine Mycophenolate

G1 Premitotic rest Mitosis

dehydrogenase (IMPDH), thereby preventing deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) synthesis. Lymphocytes, but not other types of cell, rely on de novo purine synthesis for replication. Mycophenolate mofetil can therefore be used to inhibit polyclonal proliferative responses of both T and B cells. Prospective randomized clinical trials of mycophenolate mofetil have shown that it can be used to prevent acute rejection of solid organ grafts. All of the agents mentioned above are small chemical immunosuppressive molecules. In addition to the use of these agents to prevent graft rejection, larger so-called biological molecules are used. These include polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies that target lymphocytes (Table 1). Polyclonal antithymocyte or lymphocyte globulin (ATG and ALG) has been used for many years to treat acute rejection when it occurs. ATG contains a collection of dierent antibodies that recognize molecules present on the surface of human lymphocytes. It is infused into transplant patients during a rejection episode and has the eect of eliminating or depleting lymphocytes. As the lymphocytes are known to be the major cellular mediators of rejection, their elimination should result in immunosuppression. To try to make this type of rejection treatment more selective, monoclonal antibody preparations have been developed more recently; these include antibodies anti-CD3 and anti-CD25. CD3 is expressed by T cells. The monoclonal antibody, OKT3, recognizes and binds to cells expressing CD3, targeting them for activation, opsonization and lysis. OKT3 can be used to treat patients undergoing their rst acute rejection episode after renal (Ortho Multi Centre Study Group, 1985), liver or heart transplantation. OKT3 has also been used by some centres for prophylaxis or induction therapy with the aim of improving long-term allograft survival by delaying the rst episode of acute rejection. The administration of OKT3 is not without side eects. The majority of patients treated with the monoclonal antibody experienced transient u-like symptoms due to cytokine release as a result of activation of the T cells targeted by the antibody. In addition, this monoclonal antibody was of mouse origin (i.e. xenogeneic protein). When it was used as a therapeutic agent, most patients made an immune response against the mouse protein that neutralized the biological eect of the antibody. The technology used to generate monoclonal antibodies has progressed markedly since the introduction of OKT3 into clinical use. It is now possible to engineer antibodies using molecular techniques such that an antibody with the desired binding reactivity can be made to resemble a human antibody as closely as possible humanized or chimaeric monoclonal antibodies (Winter and Milstein, 1991). In this way, when the antibodies are used as therapeutic agents the protein infused is not xenogeneic, thus reducing the possibility of triggering an immune response. CD25 is the a chain of the IL-2R. It is expressed by lymphocytes only once they have been activated.

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Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

Engineered monoclonal antibodies targeting the CD25 molecule have been developed and are being used to prevent rejection in clinical transplantation. Although the immunosuppressive agents described above are very eective in the short term, they all have both immunological and nonimmunological side eects directly or indirectly associated with their use in transplant patients. These side eects can compromise both the function of the transplant and the quality of life of the transplant patient. All the immunosuppressive agents currently in clinical use act on the immune system nonspecically. In other words, instead of just targeting those elements of the recipients immune system that are activated after transplantation and that play an active role in the immune response against the transplant, the drugs suppress the whole immune system nonselectively. This means that transplant patients are less able to mount eective immune responses against infection and have an increased risk of developing cancer. Immunosuppressive agents that target the immune system more selectively and ultimately specically, resulting in donor-specic unresponsiveness or tolerance, will improve this situation. One-year graft survival rates have improved remarkably since the earliest days of clinical renal transplantation such that at present most centres report survival gures of 80 90% for kidney grafts at 1 year. Unfortunately, this remarkable short-term improvement in graft survival has not resulted in a corresponding increase in long-term graft survival. Half of kidney transplants still fail within 8 years of transplantation, and the rate of graft loss after the rst year has not changed in the past 20 years. This illustrates very clearly that the immunosuppressive agents currently available do not control the immune system eectively and are unable to prevent chronic rejection. Much more work developing new agents is needed to try to overcome this serious problem.

These data support the idea that the immune system requires two signals when it recognizes antigen to become activated (Laerty et al., 1983). If only one signal, in the context of transplantation donor antigens, is present, the immune system will not be activated and, under the correct circumstances, will actually be inactivated and fail to respond. In support of this hypothesis, when kidney grafts that have been transplanted into immunosuppressed recipients are retransplanted into a second naive recipient, they survive without immunosuppression. After transplantation into the primary host, the donor-derived passenger leucocytes present in the graft would have migrated to the recipient lymphoid tissue. When the grafts depleted of passenger leucocytes were retransplanted they were less immunogenic and unable to trigger rejection. To conrm that the absence of donor-derived passenger leucocytes was responsible for the prolonged graft survival in the second recipient, donor APCs were infused at the time of retransplantation. In this situation, the kidneys were rejected. Removal of donor-derived passenger leucocytes from solid organ grafts presents a challenge that is orders of magnitude more dicult than their removal from cellular grafts such as islets of Langerhans. When the passenger cells are eliminated, islet grafts are less immunogenic and survival is prolonged, in some experimental studies indenitely without nonspecic immunosuppression.

Induction of Transplantation Tolerance

In transplantation the term tolerance is taken to mean the continued survival and function of a graft in the absence of a deleterious immune response and chronic immunosuppression. The ability to switch o, or even modify, the immune response specically to the alloantigens expressed by the organ donor without compromising the recipients ability to respond to other immune challenges after transplantation would represent a major advance in clinical transplantation as we now know it. As mentioned above, increasing the specicity of immunosuppression required to inhibit the immune response against the transplant would result in a signicant reduction in the adverse consequences of a lifetime of immunosuppression. Moreover, if xenotransplantation is to become a routine clinical procedure, the induction of tolerance may have to become an essential part of any treatment protocol, and in this situation the induction of T- and B-cell tolerance may be essential. In straightforward terms, the strategies that are being explored for the induction of transplantation tolerance fall into three broad categories: (1) strategies that rely solely on the deletion of donor-reactive lymphocytes, (2) strategies that induce a suppressor or regulatory population of lymphocytes that can control the immune response against
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Reducing Immunogenicity of Grafts

Donor-derived passenger leucocytes, immature dendritic cells, are present within solid organ grafts at the time of transplantation. These cells are triggered to migrate out of the graft as a result of the inammation caused by removing the organ from the donor and transplanting it into the recipient. When the donor passenger cells migrate from the graft to the recipient lymphoid tissue, they change their functional properties and become potent antigenpresenting cells (APCs) (Banchereau and Steinman, 1998). As a result, they can present the donor histocompatibility antigens that are mismatched to the recipient immune system, thereby triggering rejection. One way of potentially reducing the immunogenicity of a graft would be to eliminate the passenger leucocytes before transplantation.

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Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

the transplant and (3) strategies that invoke both mechanisms stimulating apoptosis or programmed cell death of T cells in the early posttransplant phase and the development of regulatory T cells in the longer term. Mixed allogeneic chimaerism is one approach that can be used to delete donor alloreactive or xenoreactive lymphocytes in vivo (Sykes and Sachs, 1988) In this system the transplant recipient is manipulated using biological agents that target T-cell function either alone or in combination with low-dose irradiation before infusion of a mixture of bone marrow cells from both the recipient and organ donor. This results in the development of long-term, stable, mixed, allogeneic chimaerism in the recipient and deletion of donor-reactive lymphocytes from their immunological repertoire. For this approach to be used successfully in clinical practice, the ability to achieve engraftment of haematopoietic tissues without ablative treatment of the recipient is essential. With an increased understanding and new insights into stem cell biology, cell migration in vivo and growth requirements for haematopoietic cell engraftment may become easier to achieve in the future. New reagents for depleting peripheral leucocytes more eectively are being developed. Data using an anti-CD3 immunotoxin to manipulate the peripheral T-cell repertoire before transplantation have shown that this can lead to the long-term survival of renal allografts in primates, with tolerance to donor alloantigens developing in some recipients (Knechtle et al., 1997). The principles highlighted by these experiments have stimulated a number of other studies (e.g. Calne et al., 1998) that may result in the identication of an eective strategy that can be used clinically. Work on novel approaches for developing peripheral tolerance is progressing rapidly as new targets for manipulating immune responses with biological agents are identied. Biological agents that target CD3, CD4 and CD8 molecules have all been shown to induce tolerance to alloantigens in experimental models (Waldmann and Cobbold, 1998). Blockade of costimulation by targeting the CD28CD80/86 and/or the CD40CD154 pathways is also producing exciting and impressive experimental ndings (Harlan and Kirk, 1999) The majority of these approaches lead to the development of immunoregulation specic for donor antigens in vivo. The characteristics of the leucocytes responsible for immunoregulation are being dened, and this information will be invaluable for rening these approaches in the future. These same agents may also facilitate stem cell engraftment of haematopoietic cells which would lead to deletion of donor-reactive cells. More targets will present themselves as our understanding of the pathways for costimulation and immunoregulation in vivo increases. The potential of CD152 (cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4)), to downregulate immune responses is intriguing (Bluestone, 1998), and exploration of the molecular mechanisms involved is
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certain to focus attention on this as a possible way of controlling immune responsiveness to transplant and developing tolerance in the future. The use of biological agents such as monoclonal antibodies or soluble recombinant ligands at the time of transplantation to facilitate the development of long-term graft survival and ultimately tolerance is also not without diculty and presents many challenges of its own. One unresolved issue is how to use biological agents eectively in combination with conventional immunosuppressive drugs such as cyclosporin, tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. Data from experimental studies suggest that the use of a biological agent and cyclosporin simultaneously at the time of transplantation may inhibit the development of long-term graft survival (Larsen et al., 1996). If this nding is reproducible, the identication of ways in which the biological agents can be combined eectively with immunosuppressive drugs is essential. Work on this topic is already in progress, and before too long new insights should emerge into the way the intracellular pathways aected by the drugs and those required for the induction and maintenance of tolerance intersect. One strategy that has been shown to be successful for modifying immune responsiveness to alloantigens is the administration of alloantigen before transplantation. Clearly, this approach does not result in true transplantation tolerance, but nevertheless may result in some degree of unresponsiveness to donor antigens becoming established. In the clinical setting pretransplant blood transfusion has been shown to improve renal allograft survival. In the 1970s and early 1980s pretransplant blood transfusions were used by transplant centres around the world as a means of improving graft survival. For a variety of reasons this practice has fallen into disuse in many centres more recently. However, data from new prospective studies suggest that it may be worth reconsidering as an interim approach (Opelz et al., 1997). Newer approaches use pretransplant administration of alloantigen in combination with biological agents with the objective of developing specic unresponsiveness to a dened set of alloantigens before transplantation. In this way the mechanisms responsible for the development of the unresponsive state should be established before transplantation and the administration of immunosuppressive drug therapy.

References
Banchereau J and Steinman R (1998) Dendritic cells and the control of immunity. Nature 392: 245252. Bluestone J (1998) Is CTLA-4 a master switch for peripheral T cell tolerance? Journal of Immunology 158: 19891993. Calne R, Friend P and Morratt S et al. (1998) Prope tolerance, perioperative campath 1H, and low dose cyclosporin monotherapy in renal allograft recipients. Lancet 351: 17011702.

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Graft Rejection: Immunological Suppression

The MHC Sequencing Consortium (1999) Complete sequence and gene map of a human major histocompatiblity complex. Nature 401: 921 923. Harlan D and Kirk A (1999) The future of organ and tissue transplantation: can T cell costimulatory pathway modiers revolutionize the prevention of graft rejection? Journal of the American Medical Association 282: 10761082. Knechtle S, Vargo D and Fechner J et al. (1997) FN18-CRM9 immunotaxin promotes tolerance in primal renal allografts. Transplantation 63: 16. Laerty K, Prowse S and Simeonovic C (1983) Immunology of tissue transplantation: a return to the passenger leukocyte concept. Annual Review of Immunology 1: 143173. Larsen P, Elwood E, Alexander D et al. (1996) Long-term acceptance of skin and cardiac allografts after blocking CD40 and CD28 pathways. Nature 381: 434438. Morris P, Johnson R, Fuggle S, Belger M and Briggs J (1999) Analysis of factors that aect the outcome of primary cadaveric renal transplantation in the UK. HLA task force of the kidney advisory group of the United Kingdom Transplant Support Service Authority (UKTSSA). Lancet 354: 11471152. Opelz G, Vanrenterghem Y, Kirste G et al. (1997) Prospective evaluation of pretransplant blood transfusions in cadaver kidney recipients. Transplantation 63: 964967.

Ortho Multi Centre Study Group (1985) A randomised trial of OKT3 monoclonal antibody for acute rejection of cadaveric renal transplantation. New England Journal of Medicine 313: 337342. Simpson E, Roopenian D and Goulmy E (1998) Much ado about minor histocompatibility antigens. Immunology Today 9: 108112. Sykes M and Sachs DH (1988) Mixed allogeneic chimerism as an approach to transplantation tolerance. Immunology Today 9: 2327. Waldmann H and Cobbold S (1998) How do monoclonal antibodies induce tolerance? A role for infectious tolerance? Annual Review of Immunology 16: 619644. Winter G and Milstein C (1991) Man-made antibodies. Nature 349: 293 299.

Further Reading
Ginns LC, Cosimi AB and Morris PJ (eds) (1999) Transplantation. Oxford: Blackwell Science. The Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust Website (2000) The Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust. [http://www.anthonynolan.com] The Eurotransplant International Foundation (2000) Eurotransplant. [http://www.eurotransplant.nl] Thomson AW and Starzl TE (eds) (1994) Immunosuppressive Drugs. London: Edward Arnold. United Network for Organ Sharing (2000) United Network for Organ Sharing Online. [http://www.unos.org]

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