Abstract
On behalf of the Japan Society of Organ Preservation and Medical Biology (JSOPMB), I express my great pleasure to Professor Paul R. Sanberg (Department of Neurosurgery, College of Medicine, University of South Florida, FL, USA), Coeditor-in-Chief of Cell Transplantation, for giving us such an excellent opportunity to publish the data that were presented at the annual meeting of JSOPMB.
I also thank Dr. David Eve, Associate Editor of Cell Transplantation, for editing of our papers in detail. I am very sure that the relationship between Cell Transplantation and JSOPMB has enhanced the motivation of JSOPMB members as well as board members and will continue to do so in the future, while also encouraging young Japanese researchers to newly join this organization. Cell transplantation is one of the most important fields in JSOPMB, because this form of therapy can be used for a wide range of diseases in humans.
To answer the current problem of severe human donor organ shortage for cell therapies is a big challenge. Research on adult and embryonic stem cells and artificial cell development, in addition to the current invention of induced pluripotent stem cells, encourages us to address the problems confronting cell transplantation. Therefore, JSOPMB has now importantly focused on regenerative medicine in collaboration with cell biologists.
One of the extremely important missions of the annual meeting of JSOPMB is to exchange new research outcomes and create new therapeutic concepts. JSOPMB always encourages and motivates young investigators.
JSOPMB was started in 1974 for the study of organ preservation and developed widely in the 1990s with the participation of researchers in various fields of medicine, pharmacology, engineering, veterinary medicine, and basic science. Now JSOPMB has more than 400 members and is run under the direction of Dr. T. Asano, President of JSOPMB.
Excellent presentations conducted at the 34th annual meeting of JSOPMB held on November 23–24, 2007, in Sapporo, Japan, under the supervision of Dr. T. Tamaki (Chief, Department of Surgery, Hokuyu-kai Hospital, Sapporo, Japan) were selected and given the opportunity to be published in this special issue of Cell Transplantation. Twenty-four of these presentations are herein published in this special JSOPMB issue.
This includes two diabetes-related reviews looking at the potential for regeneration (6) and a comparison of methods to preserve pancreatic tissue for transplant (15). The preservation of tissue was again an important feature of the meeting, with three papers looking at the use of an antioxidant found in tea, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (1,4,10) for the preservation of several different tissue types. Two papers looked at alternative ways of protecting isolated hearts (2,20), while another looked at the constituents of different preservation solutions used for islet preservation (17).
Diabetes continued to be a major focus because as well as the two reviews mentioned above, there were two papers evaluating islet transplantation (8,9), and two papers looking specifically at the development of pancreatic stem cells (16,19). Additionally, Oishi et al. (18) looked at the ability of different types of somatic stem cells, including pancreatic stem cells, to differentiate. They also looked at adipose-derived stem cells, another popular subject with additional papers looking at ways to label, manipulate, and transplant these specific cells (22–24). By contrast, Miyamato et al. looked at hepatocytes and embryonic stem cell preservation (12).
Transplantation was also a major topic of interest with one paper looking at ways to reduce graft versus host disease after transplantation using a CD28 antibody (5), and three others looking at different aspects of kidney and liver transplantation (3,7,11). The growth of hepatocytes was also studied in vivo (14) and in vitro in a 3D culture (13). Finally, one paper looked at angiogenesis induced by transplantation of an artifical device with respect to the generation of an artifical pancreas (21).
The 35th annual meeting of JSOPMB was held on November 22–23, 2008, in Tokyo, Japan, under the supervision of Dr. T. Nagao (Professor of Department of Surgery, Tokyo Hachioji Medical Center). The theme of this JSOPMB meeting was “Taking a Lesson From the Past in Organ Biology.” The Board members and I are looking forward to seeing further progress in JSOPMB in conjunction with Cell Transplantation.