Elimination of anti rejection medicaitons

ASN news recently reported a study that is ongoing using specially processed stem cells from the same kidney donor being transplanted along with the kidney to that recipient, allowing that to continue in chimerism leading to an early presumed tolerance and hence no anti rejection medications for long term.
This concept is not new and has been attempted in the recent past. In 2008, NEJM paper by David Sachs et al showed that 5 patients could come off all immunosuppresion after a combined stem cell and kidney transplantation. This theory is used in myeloma treatment as well when patients get an allogenic and kidney transplant at the same time allowing to help both the organs of treatment.
A similar concept was presented recently in CJASN Feb 2011 issue about using autologous  mesanchymal stromal cells during kidney transplants. They showed that in two patients, this allowed engraftment of T regs in the peripheral blood and control memory CD8 T cells function.  In vitro studies have shown that mesenchymal stromal cells abrogate allo immune response  and could function as anti T cell agents in a "different" manner.


here is some older data on this topic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18216355
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20605588
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20930086