Tatsuo Kawai, M.D., Ph.D.


Physician Investigator (Cl)
Surgery, Mass General Research Institute
Professor of Surgery
Harvard Medical School
Visiting Surgeon
Transplant Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital
MD Nihon University 1981
PhD Tokyo Women's Medical University 1991
bone marrow transplantation; graft survival; hla mismatched kidney transplantation; immune tolerance; immunosuppression; kidney transplantation; macaca fascicularis; mixed chimerism; renal allograft tolerance; transplantation chimera; transplantation tolerance

The induction of donor-specific tolerance is currently one of the most important goals of organ or cell transplantation.

Based on our rodent studies on mixed chimerism, we developed a clinically relevant non-myeloablative preparative regimen to induce mixed chimerism and renal allograft tolerance following donor bone marrow transplantation in MHC fully-mismatched cynomolgus monkeys. This approach has been successfully extended to HLA mismatched kidney transplant recipients.

In 4/5 recipients who were treated with our mini-bone marrow transplant, immunosuppression was successfully discontinued at 9-14 months following the transplant in the other four recipients with longest survival exceeding 7 years. Since January 2009, an expanded, multi-center clinical trial for tolerance induction following HLA mismatched kidney transplantation has been underway.