Gains in Grafts

Skin grafts or organs transplanted from one human being to another will not "take" permanently unless donor and recipient are identical twins. Reason: any healthy mammal sets up antibody defenses against "foreign" protein. For treating burns and in plastic and reconstructive work, surgeons would be able to do much more for patients if they could break down this automatic defense system. Last week, from a Manhattan conference sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, came word of the most promising breakthrough yet on the antibody front.

The Sloan-Kettering Institute's Dr. Helene W. Toolan reported the first success with rats and rabbits. She took skin from embryos in the first third of gestation, found that it made a permanent graft on 45% of unrelated adults, grew a good crop of hair. Memorial Hospital's Plastic Surgeon Reuven K. Snyderman applied the technique to cancer patients and burn victims. From human embryos lost (from spontaneous or therapeutic abortion) during the first 4 1/2 months of pregnancy he took skin grafts for eight patients. Four failed to take, probably because of infection, Dr. Snyderman suggested. The other four took. Most remarkable was the fact that a postage-stamp-size piece of fetal skin grew and eventually covered a much larger area on a burn victim's body. Two patients have maintained the grafts for nearly a year, whereas adult skin would have sloughed off in less than a month.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.