The plight of a patient waiting months, sometimes years, for an organ transplant is one of the most heart-wrenching predicaments confronting medicine today. But the current critical shortage of human donor organs has had one positive consequence: it has stimulated promising new research into the field of xenotransplantation--the transplantation of organs from one animal species to another.
In Xeno: The Promise of Transplanting Animal Organs Into Humans, David Cooper and Robert Lanza explore what may become one of the greatest medical advances of the 21st century. As scientists...

Encapsulated cells offer enormous potential for the treatment of human disease. This work includes detailed descriptions of chemical properties of encapsulation materials, purification, biocompatibility issues and experimental protocols.

The concept of using encapsulation for the immunoprotection of transplanted cells was introduced for the first time in the 1960s. " Microencapsulated cells] might be protected from destruction and from partici- pation in immunological processes, while the enclosing membrane would be permeable to small molecules of specific cellular product which could then enter the general extracellular compartment of the recipient. For instance, encapsulated endocrine cells might survive and maintain an effective supply of hormone." (Chang, Ph.D. Thesis, McGill University, 1965; Chang et aI., Can J Physiol...