Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Northwestern Memorial Hospital's stem cell study

A couple of weeks ago, I made a post on transplanting stem cells along with a kidney. My sister helped me track down a little more information, but I found myself still with a lot of questions. Today, thanks to a press release on Northwestern Memorial Hospital's website, I think I have a much better idea of what this is all about. It sounds like it is still pretty experimental, and very much limited to "perfect match" sorts of kidney transplants right now, but if this ends up being successful, and eventually more broadly available to "less than perfect match" transplants, this would be a HUGE breakthrough. Being able to receive a kidney transplant without having to stay on immunosupressive drugs would greatly improve the quality of life for transplant recipients.

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