Two new papers examine the processes of lung scarring and chronic rejection of the organ after transplantation, and potential therapies to stop the graft, or transplanted organ and its tissue, from failing.
“Chronic graft failure due to progressive scarring is the number one worry of all transplant physicians with very few means available to stop it,” says Vibha Lama, M.D., a lung transplantation physician and professor and vice chair of basic and translational research in internal medicine at Michigan Medicine. “We realize that the way for us to stop it is by discovering why, and how, this scarring develops so that we can offer novel personalized therapies for patients.”
Lama is the senior author of the two papers that demonstrate the link between antibodies targeting the donor lung and a particularly aggressive form of chronic rejection after lung transplantation called restrictive allograft syndrome, or RAS.
“It’s a very devastating diagnosis because the prognosis is very poor with a high six-month mortality rate and no current therapeutic options,” Lama says.
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Heart and double lung transplant 
Aspergillus post lung transplant.
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Accute & Chronic Lung Inflammation?
