Xenograft Transplantation and the Infectious Disease Conundrum

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Abstract
Transplant surgeons and AIDS clinicians are on the verge of implementing a host of new procedures that will revolutionize transplantation and adoptive cell transfer techniques in a quest for cures to such diverse medical conditions as heart disease and AIDS. Just as gene therapy is expected to directly impact inherited diseases, new advances in immunosuppressive drug combinations and new discoveries in our understanding of the fundamental processes of immune tolerance have led to thereal possibility of engineering tissue and cell transplants from other living species such as baboons and pigs into humans(xenogeneic transplantation) ( Starzl and others 1994 ). At the same time, interest in emerging viruses as a discipline for virologists and infectious disease specialists has surfaced, and it appears that these two fields may be on a collision course at the present moment ( Michaels and Simmons 1994 ; Allan 1994 ).