MHC-Ig Dimers: The next Frontier in Transplantation Immunology

Abstract

Organ transplantation offers hope to a variety of patients with terminal functioning organs and tissues. This is currently made possible by administration of general immunosuppressive drugs. To date, inducing tolerance to allografts has become the holy grail of every transplantation immunologist. In effect, there has been a great deal of research aiming to come up with alternative therapeutic mechanisms that would allow one to do away with or reduce the amount of general immunosuppressive drugs used either at the induction, maintenance, or both phases. It has been shown in recent years that MHC-Ig dimers can induce suppression of alloresponsive T cells in a donor specific fashion. Consequently, MHC-Ig fusion proteins are currently forming the next field for exploitation which is great progress in transplantation immunology since the discovery of the first immunosuppressive drugs in terms of inducing tolerance to transplanted organs and tissues. This review aims to discuss this progress.