A recent grant from the Department of Defense (DoD) to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will fund a new study of advanced transplantation techniques. The study, which is being led by Children’s Hospital’s Wayne Hancock, MBBS, PhD, FRCPA, will focus on vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA), a type of transplantation in which multiple tissues — such as an entire hand — are transplanted “as a functional unit,” according to the American Society of Transplantation (AST). In particular, Dr. Hancock and his team will be working to develop “new approaches to immunosuppression,” he said.
By carefully adjusting the function of crucial immune cells, Children's Hospital investigators may have developed a completely new type of cancer immunotherapy, one that involves harnessing the body's immune system to attack tumors.
