Abstract
On behalf of the Japan Society for Organ Preservation and Medical Biology (JSOPMB), I express my sincere appreciation to Professor Paul R. Sanberg (Department of Neurosurgery, College of Medicine, University of South Florida, FL, USA), Coeditor-in-Chief of Cell Transplantation, for providing 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.
First of all, I would like to inform the readers that we successfully conducted the first joint conference of the JSOPMB and Cell Transplantation Society (CTS) Congress on April 20–21, 2009, in Okayama, Japan. This is an important step for us; getting together with CTS members.
I am very sure that the relationship between the Cell Transplantation journal 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 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. Answering the current problem of the 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 recent and rapidly evolving invention of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) 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 1990s with participation of researchers in various fields of medicine, pharmacology, engineering, veterinary medicine, and basic science. Currently JSOPMB has more than 400 members and is run under the direction of Dr. T. Asano, the President of JSOPMB.
Excellent presentations conducted at the 35th annual meeting of JSOPMB held November 22–23, 2008, in Tokyo, Japan, under the supervision of Dr. T. Nagao (Professor, Department of Surgery, Hachioji Medical Center of Tokyo Medical University, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan) were selected and given an opportunity to be published in this special issue of Cell Transplantation. Thirty of these presentations are presented in this issue.
There are three reviews, looking at protein transduction technology (16), cell delivery for cell transplants and organ engineering (24), and the mechanisms of immunomodulation and homing of mesenchymal stem cells (28).
The preservation of tissue was one of the important features of the meeting, with one paper looking at cold storage of osteochondral allografts by the use of epigallocatechin gallate (1) and another looking at mammalian cell cryopreservation by the use of polyampholytes (11). Miyamoto et al. (12) looked at the improved attachment capability of cryopreserved human hepatocytes with the use of a highly proteinaceous molecule, sericin. One paper studied ways to protect isolated rat hearts using high partial pressure carbon monoxide gas and carbon dioxide (2), while another looked at the renal protective effect of erythropoietin (13). Kusaka et al. (10) looked at the serum tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases 1 as a useful predictor for renal recovery from delayed graft function.
Diabetes continued to be a major focus with three papers evaluating different aspects of islet transplantation. Ikemoto et al. (4) looked at islet quality following international shipping, while Kim et al. (8) reported on the improved yield and functional parameters of rat pancreas islets under intramuscular anesthesia. Noguchi et al. (18) compared modified Celsior solution and M-Kyoto solution for human pancreas preservation.
There were four papers regarding immunology and inflammation, including the analysis of phosphatidylserine-specific phospholipase A1 expression in human macrophages (3), the prevention of graft-versus-host diseases by in vivo supCD28mAb-expanded antigen-specific nTreg cells (9), the induced expression of crucial inflammatory mediators in islets by brain death and warm ischemic stress (22), and human immune reactivity against liver sinusoidal endothelial cells from galTα(1, 3) GalT-deficient pigs (26).
Tissue engineering was one of the more important topics of the meeting. Two papers looked at the usefulness of a self-assembling peptide (PuraMatrix) for bone repair (14) and xenogenic hepatocyte transplantation (29), respectively. Ohashi et al. (19) looked at the engineering of liver tissues under the kidney capsule site, while Soto-Gutierrez et al. (25) reported on hepatic organoide engineering for the development of liver assist devices. Yagi et al. (27) looked at tissue repair with the support of bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells.
Stem cell research was a major topic of interest with three papers looking at ways to culture iPS cells (5) and the following of hepatic differentiation (6, 23), and three other papers were focused on the biological characteristics of colon cancer stem cells (7, 15) and human pancreatic progenitor cells (17).
The development of new technologies for imaging and gene and molecular transfer was an important feature of the meeting and three papers highlight this issue. Oishi et al. (20) looked at cell labeling with a novel contrast agent of magnetic resonance imaging. Two others reported on the usefulness of Sendai virus vector-mediated efficient transfection (21) and cell-penetrating peptide-based transduction in iPS cells (30).
The 36th annual meeting of JSOPMB was held together with the 10th CTS Congress on April 20–21, 2009, in Okayama, Japan, under the supervision of Dr. N. Kobayashi (Assistant Professor of Department of Surgery, Okayama University Hospital). The theme of this JSOPMB meeting was “Get Fun and Enjoy Together.” The Board members and I are looking forward to seeing further progress in JSOPMB in conjunction with Cell Transplantation.