They suggested that it might be possible to overcome the risk of immune rejection of the donor cells in humans.
And even if it does work, it is not clear how long the implants will keep working, whether they will damage the nerve cells and whether there will be a problem with immune rejection.
All patients will eventually have some rejection and nobody will be completely immune from rejection.
This is because the immune system's rejection response (which obviously did not evolve to frustrate transplant surgery) is actually there to attack tumours.
One worry is that drugs used to prevent rejection of a transplant depress the immune system, and "cancers can grow rapidly afterward, " said the UCSF's Dr. Tempero.
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Could patients have themselves cloned in order to harvest cells from a genetically-identical embryo, gaining a donor and avoiding the major problem of transplant surgery: rejection of foreign tissue by the immune system?
Research presented to the International Congress of The Transplantation Society in Miami, Florida, showed how some patients' immune systems can be fooled into believing they do not need anti-rejection drugs.
The transplant recipient has to take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of his or her life to prevent rejection of the donated tissue.
Organs from corpses are not always healthy, and the drugs that patients must take to prevent rejection of their new organs make them vulnerable to infections that those with robust immune systems do not usually get.
Because these cells would essentially be clones made from the patient's own cells, there would be no risk of the rejection problems typical with organ transplants, and therefore no need for the drugs that prevent the immune system from attacking a transplanted organ.
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