New Tools to Address Old Challenges in Tolerogenic Cellular Therapies
A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 April 2026 | Viewed by 19
Special Issue Editors
Interests: immune regulation; allograft rejection
2. Center for Biomedical Research and Translational Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Interests: transplantation; transplant immunology; regulatory T cells; immunological tolerance; alloimmunity; gd T cells; immunomodulation; cardiac transplantation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
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
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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.
Keywords
- tolerogenic strategies
- immune tolerance
- allogeneic cellular therapies
- autoimmunity
- allergy
- systems immunology
- artificial intelligence
- biomarkers
- immune regulation
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