Life saving organ transplant technology and "Commercial Interest"

[momsquad]

<p>This article in the LA Times describes a new technique to prevent rejection in organ transplant recipients. The research was conducted at a public institution, the University of Louisville. I don’t know the funding sources for the research, but was dismayed when I read that the researchers are keeping key aspects of their research secret to protect “commercial interests”. Apparently they have identified a previously unknown class of cells they dub ‘tolerogenic’ that they refuse to describe in more detail. Is this where medical science, and perhaps all science is headed? Every useful discovery will be kept secret until it can be milked for profit?</p>

<p>[Study</a> suggests breakthrough in organ transplants - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-kidney-transplant-stem-cells-20120308,0,7958794,full.story]Study”>http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-kidney-transplant-stem-cells-20120308,0,7958794,full.story)</p>

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Key to this was refining each donor’s stew of cells into an elixir enriched for adult stem cells, the early descendants of stem cells, and a heretofore unrecognized class of cells dubbed “tolerogenic graft-facilitating cells” by the study authors.</p>

<p>In a controversial move to protect their commercial interest in the newly described therapy, the authors declined to detail what those cells were and how they are identified and treated. But they reported that earlier studies in mice revealed that these facilitating cells “potently prevent graft-versus-host disease.”

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Dr. David H. Sachs, a transplantation expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of a widely hailed recent study on chimerism, called the results “very interesting … and very different from what others expected.” But he added that they “are not going to be easy to reproduce,” given the authors’ choice to keep the method of cellular preparation a secret.

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