Researchers have determined a novel mechanism through which organ transplantation often leads to cancer, and their findings suggest that targeted therapies may reduce or prevent that risk.

The UK government must bring in presumed consent to organ donation or allow a controlled donor compensation programme for unrelated live donors, in order to bring the "inhumane" practice of transplant tourism from the UK to an end, claims a doctor in this week's BMJ.

Only about 6 percent of former alcoholics and 4 percent of former illicit drug users will relapse into their addictions in any given year following an organ transplant. These results are published in the February issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal by John Wiley & Sons. The article is also available online via Wiley Interscience.

New research from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center suggests that age alone shouldn’t be a barrier to receiving a kidney transplant – and that using donated kidneys that would once have been discarded may help alleviate the burgeoning organ shortage among older adults.

Each year, pharmaceutical companies invest millions of dollars to test drugs, many of which will never reach the market because of side effects found only during human clinical trials. At the same time, the number of patients waiting for organ transplants continues to increase.

Several new studies suggest how transplant surgeons can make more effective use of kidneys from deceased donors – even those that are at the outer limits of acceptance criteria – according to researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

People with organ transplants, resigned to a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs, may now have reason to hope for a respite, say researchers at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine.

After immunosuppressants, the best medicine for organ transplant patients might be gratitude.

A compound related to a drug used in humans to prevent organ-transplant rejection attacks a key biochemical process in the faulty immune cells of lupus-prone mice, suggesting a possible new approach to combating the disease, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

A woman, whose ovaries had failed due to damage caused by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, has received a successful ovarian transplant from her genetically non-identical sister. The transplant restored her ovarian function, she started to menstruate and, after a year, doctors were able to recover two mature oocytes from her ovaries and fertilise them to produce two embryos.

A content analysis of newspaper stories about organ and tissue donation, conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo, found an almost 4:1 ratio of positive-to-negative articles on the subject.

China's first set of regulations on human organ transplant, which prohibits organizations and individuals from trading human organs in any form, went into effect on Tuesday. Any doctor found to be involved in human organ trade will have their practitioner license revoked, according to the regulations issued by the State Council, China's cabinet.