The increasing number and the improvement in the success of heart and lung transplantation in recent years make now the most exciting time to be involved in research related to the scientific issues surrounding this field. Among those issues, two problems are currently recognized to be the major impediment to the optimal application of transplantation in patients with end-stage cardiopulmonary disease. First, there is a lack of consistent long-term graft survival, which is constrained by the current immunosuppressive regimen and its side effects; compared to other solid organ transplants, lung and heart-lung allografts are particularly susceptible to this problem. Second, there is a dire shortage of donor organs; although this problem is especially pronounced in lung and heart-lung transplantation, it is also seen in transplantation of other organs. The Duke Cardiopulmonary Transplantation Laboratory addresses both of these problems and examines the factors associated with chronic allograft failure as well as the approaches aimed at circumventing the donor organ shortage.
