Organ Donation: An Advancing Science Hindered by Supply...(vel of T-cells the part of the immune sy...),Health

When the bone marrow regenerates, the new T-cells it produces tend to accept the new organ as part of the body.

"We start the immune system over, so to speak, so the new T-cells that form are eliminated if they react too strongly to either the self or the new organ," Sachs said.

The promise of the research doesn't end there. Taking it further, Sachs believes these methods could end the dire demand for organs by creating a new supply.

"We believe this same kind of tolerance can be induced for a xenograft" -- or a grafted organ donated from an animal rather than a human, Sachs said. "We've been working very hard on that, too, and we're working on pigs as a potential donor."

"Tolerance can be even more important there, because the amount of immunosuppression needed is even greater when the donor is from outside the species," he added.

Such a breakthrough could end the frustration that organ donation experts feel on a daily basis, as more lives that could have been saved are instead lost.

Until then, calls for organ donation will continue to ring out.

"We have lots of national heath-care crises in this country that we don't have a solution for," Fleming said. "We actually know the solution for this one, for a big part of it. It's very frustrating when you know the cure for something, but you can't get someone to do it."

More information

To learn more about organ donation, visit Donate Life America.

SOURCES: David Sachs, M.D., director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; David Fleming, executive director of Donate Life America, Richmond, Va.; U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration