MINI REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. T Cell Biology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1685682
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Treg Cell Therapy: A Comprehensive Review SeriesView all 6 articles
Regulatory T cell therapy for xenotransplantation, what perspectives?
Provisionally accepted
Raphaël Porret1
Erica Lana1
Antonio Mancarella1Philippe Guillaume1
Manuel Antonio Pascual1
Raphael Pascal Henri Meier2Jonathan S. Bromberg2
Muhammad Mansoor Mohiuddin2
Leo Buhler3
Qizhi Tang4
Yannick Daniel Muller1*- 1Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland
- 2University of Maryland Baltimore School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
- 3Universite de Fribourg Section de medecine, Fribourg, Switzerland
- 4UCSF Diabetes Center, San Francisco, United States
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Xenotransplantation has experienced major clinical advancements over the past three years. Yet, despite potent immunosuppressive regimens combining B-cell depleting therapies, T cell activation blockade, complement inhibition, and high-dose steroids, signs of antibody-mediated and cellular rejection were seen in the few pig-to human heart and kidney xenotransplants. Considering the recent success of chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies in severe refractory autoimmune diseases, there are windows for opportunities to develop novel approaches to reduce the burden of immunosuppression. In this line, regulatory T cell (Treg) therapy is an attractive strategy, as Tregs could be genetically modified to recognize pig organs. In this brief review, we summarize the lessons learned from Tregs therapies in allotransplantation, update on the recent development in Treg research for xenotransplantation, and discuss future perspectives of humanizing pigs with human leukocyte antigens to promote tolerance using engineered Tregs.
Keywords: xenotransplantation, xenograft tolerance, regulatory T cells, Geneticengineering, Chimeric Antigen Receptor, cell therapy
Received: 14 Aug 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Porret, Lana, Mancarella, Guillaume, Pascual, Meier, Bromberg, Mohiuddin, Buhler, Tang and Muller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yannick Daniel Muller, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland
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