New Ways to Avoid Organ Rejection Buoy Hopes

摘要

The body's first reaction to truly ' foreign tissue is not a subtle one. Organs transplanted from pigs into nonhuman primates often swell and blacken within minutes, as blood cells called platelets rush in and seize on the inner walls of blood vessels, clumping together to strangle blood flow. This gruesome phenomenon, called hyperacute rejection, is one of the biggest toadblocks obstructing what many see as a route to alleviating the dire shoitage of human donor organs-animal-to-human organ transplants.