New Tools to Address Old Challenges in Tolerogenic Cellular Therapies

Dear Colleagues,

Tolerogenic cellular therapies are emerging as powerful strategies to reprogram the immune system across diverse clinical contexts, including transplantation, allergy, and autoimmunity. In each of these settings, the central challenge is to achieve durable tolerance without the need for chronic immunosuppression or systemic immune suppression, which are associated with significant risks such as infection, malignancy, and toxicity. Approaches incorporating regulatory T cells (Tregs), tolerogenic dendritic cells, and chimerism-inducing protocols are being developed to recalibrate immune responses toward sustained acceptance rather than rejection due to the transplanted tissues themselves, environmental allergens, or self-antigens. However, their translation into standardized, widely applicable therapies is hindered by persistent obstacles, including the stability and scalability of cell products, the durability of tolerance, and the complexity of immune monitoring across heterogeneous patient populations.

In recent years, emerging tools in cell engineering, single-cell technologies, advanced imaging, and systems immunology have begun to open up new pathways for overcoming these challenges. CRISPR-based editing, synthetic biology, and multi-omics approaches are enabling deeper mechanistic insights and more precise therapeutic designs, while computational models are providing predictive frameworks for clinical outcomes.

For this Special Issue, “New Tools to Address Old Challenges in Tolerogenic Cellular Therapies”, we welcome contributions that critically examine how emerging methodologies can overcome persistent barriers in this field. With a scope encompassing transplantation, allergy, and autoimmunity, we will place a particular emphasis on the potential of tolerogenic strategies in achieving sustained, drug-free tolerance.

Dr. Konstantinos Mengrelis
Dr. Nina Pilat
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cells is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.