Doctors at Duke University say a baby is flourishing after a heart transplant, the first of its kind - one that came with a bonus technique to help prevent rejection of the new organ.
The thymus plays an important role in building the immune system. Doctors have thought that transplanting some thymus tissue that matches the donated organ could help the recipient survive without the need for toxic anti-rejection drugs.
Easton Cinnamon of Asheboro, North Carolina, received his unique transplant last summer when he was 6 months old. But Duke waited until Monday to announce it when doctors learned that specially processed thymus transplants were working as they hoped — producing immune cells that don't treat the new heart of the total like foreign tissue. Huh.
Duke's chief of pediatric cardiac surgery, Dr. Joseph Turek, said doctors would eventually try to wean Easton off the necessary immune-suppressing drugs after the transplant.
The research is at a very early stage and only one potential method scientists are testing in hopes of inducing immune tolerance to a transplant.
But Turek says that if it works, it could be tried with other organ transplants, not just the heart.
Easton was a candidate for the experimental transplant because he had two separate health problems. He was born with some heart defects which the surgery right after birth failed to resolve. And he suffered so many infections that doctors eventually realized that his own thymus was not working properly.
Some babies are born without a thymus, which stimulates the development of the part of the immune system known as T cells. Separately, the Duke researchers were working with Enzyme Therapeutics to develop a lab-grown transplant of donated thymus tissue to treat that rare disorder.
Easton found a combination of the two processes. First, surgeons transplanted his new heart while the donated thymus was sent to a laboratory. About two weeks later, he had a second operation to transplant the processed thymus tissue. His own partially functioning thymus was removed to clear the way for new immune cells to take over.
About six months later, the test shows that the thymus tissue is producing new T cells, making Easton well-functioning, Turek said.