Auxiliary Pancreas Allografting

Abstract

EXPERIMENTAL efforts in transplantation are logically divided into those studying problems of foreign tissue acceptance and those in which technical factors of organ grafting are solved. Parallel research programs in tissue typing, histocompatibility testing, and immune suppressive methodology and those of organ storage, vascular anastomosis, tolerable normothermic ischemia, and the spectrum of differences in organ rejection should exist in symbiotic relationship. These are all essential to the ultimate realization of satisfactory clinical organ replacement. The pancreas as an organ graft is receiving increased attention in transplantation research. Human pancreas transplantation has been performed (Kelly, written communication, February 1961). Nevertheless, the complexitites of pancreatic endocrine and exocrine function as well as the portosystemic nature of the vascularization which it shares with the duodenum demand that a background of solution of technical problems be accumulated. In early studies, physiologists investigating source and action of insulin showed that acute endocrine function of the