Abstract
The gold standard for the treatment of terminal heart failure and irreversible lung
diseases includes thoracic organ transplantation. The major obstacle for long-term
survival after successful transplantation is chronic rejection, an ongoing immunomodulatory
disease so far without effective therapy. Therefore, the aim of this review is to
elucidate scientific efforts targeting different new mechanisms of cardiac allograft
vasculopathy (CAV) and chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD). For this purpose,
we performed a systematic review of the literature to assess recent strategies in
transplant immunology research. We searched MEDLINE from 2015 up to date for articles
addressing the following keywords: CAV, transplant vasculopathy, transplant arteriosclerosis,
CLAD, bronchiolitis obliterans transplant, and obliterative bronchiolitis transplant.
All articles including experimental models in the field of transplant immunology addressing
new aspects for the prevention of chronic rejection after heart and lung transplantation
were included in this review. The prevention of chronic rejection would clearly improve
the survival of patients after heart and lung transplantation. Interesting targets
were addressed in recent research, but further research is necessary to effectively
treat this life-threatening disease in transplant recipients.
Keywords
experimental - immunology - rejection - transplantation - heart - lung