New treatment may stop body from rejecting new organs

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London, Nov 25 (UNI) A ray of hope for patients waiting nervously for organ transplant has come with the possibility for a radical treatment that involves washing the organ with salt water and then rinsing it with a special detergent.

The new treatment that ''rinses'' organs and then implants them with patients' DNA is being hailed as a solution to the transplant crisis.

Currently, many patients on transplant waiting list die each day because of the lack of suitable donors.

Unless a donor's tissue type is a close match, the recipient's body would reject the new organ. But new trials suggest that this would not happen if the donor organ's genetic material was ''washed away'' and replaced with a patient's stem cells.

The recipient's immune system then recognises the treated organ's cells as its own.

The process involves washing a donated organ with salt water to remove any blood and rinsing it with up to ten gallons of a special detergent. Tens of thousands of the recipient's stem cells are then grafted on to what is left of the organ and these grow into living tissue.

After a few days, the modified organ is ready to be transplanted into the patient's body.

Researchers have termed the breakthrough as ''ingenious''.

It would prevent thousands of deaths every year among patients who have no suitable donor, Daily Mail quoted them as saying.

This would also end the need for transplant patients to take a cocktail of anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.

Even as the scientists emphasize that there was still a long way to go, but there is a strong possibility that answer to the donor crisis would be found.


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