Walter Land: Crucial role of innate immune events in organ transplantation

"There is growing evidence that innate immune events provide critical initiating steps in immune responses to transplantation and key pathogenic steps in the tissue damage characteristic of humoral and cellular rejection. In fact, when I coined the term Innate Alloimmunity in 2002, I never foresaw the effect it would have on transplant thinking today," Professor Dr. Walter Land (Munich) emphasizes in his textbook "Innate Alloimmunity".

"This book reflects the beginning of an era. In the field of organ transplantation, research regarding innate immunity has just begun. The complex but orchestrated pathways leading from an initial allograft injury to final allograft rejection are not yet fully understood. However, evidence is accumulating, suggesting a crucial role of innate immune events in organ transplantation," Land notes.

Dr. J. S. Bromberg (Baltimore) comments (American Journal of Transplantation 12/2012): "Land has captured what is a major intellectual force shaping both general immunology and transplantation. ´Innate Alloimmunity´ may have been considered an oxymoron a number of years ago, but with the realization that the innate immune system covers huge swaths of the response to tissue injury, tissue repair and adaptive immunity, it is now apparent that the innate immune response is not only as important as adaptive responses in transplantation, but that innate immunity is perhaps the locus where therapeutic efforts should now be concentrated."

Dr. A. Siedlecki (Boston) comments (Transplantation 10/2012): This book "is an essential resource for every transplant physician or researcher providing them a roadmap for transplantation science into the next decade."