Speaker: Professor Stefan G. Tullius, Harvard Medical School, US, appointed honorary doctor at Sahlgrenska Academy in 2025.
Host: Mats Brännström, Institute of Clinical Sciences, Gothenburg University.
Stefan G. Tullius, MD, PhD, Joseph E. Murray Chair in Transplant Surgery vid Brigham and Women’s Hospital, är professor vid Harvard Medical School. Han är chefredaktör för tidskriften Transplantation och leder det NIH-finansierade Transplant Surgery Research Laboratory, som har studerat hur åldrande påverkar transplantationsutfall och immunitet i mer än 25 år.
Stefan G. Tullius, MD, PhD, Joseph E. Murray Chair in Transplant Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a full Professor at Harvard Medical School. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transplantation and Director of the NIH funded Transplant Surgery Research Laboratory that has been studying the impact of aging on transplant outcomes and immunity for more than 25 years.
Aging represents a worldwide phenomenon with broad consequences on healthcare and disease processes that include all aspects of end-stage organ failure and organ transplantation. A variety of factors that include genetic and environmental aspects have been identified as critical in driving physiological and accelerated aging.
In organ transplantation, immunoscenescence characterizes changes of the immune system that lead to age-specific responses. Likewise, immunosuppressants have been shown to work in an age-specific fashion. As part of an aging process, we have characterized the role of senescent cells in organ transplantation. Depletion of senescent cells, at the same time, has shown the potential to rejuvenate organs and potentially the alloimmune response.
Organ aging, at the same time may differ from a systemic, whole-body’ aging process. In transplantation, organ and recipient age may differ, providing unique opportunities to study heterochronic organ and environmental communications. Indeed, aging can be accelerated while it is also possible to set rejuvenation programs in motion when the age of organ and recipient differs.
Thus, aging may, at least to some extent, represent only a number, ready to be manipulated. Transplantation models offer unique opportunities to understand aging and rejuvenation thus offering a platform to test novel treatment options in and beyond transplantation.
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