Treatment of donor transmitted malignancy may harness the alloimmune response if the graft is not life sustaining. Cessation of immunosuppression and precipitation of graft rejection may lead to rapid rejection of the tumour as well as the graft, with reported cases of cure of metastatic melanoma when it was donor derived. This approach is not available for organs such as the heart, lung and liver, which must thus be treated by minimisation of immunosuppression and conventional therapy for the malignancy.
In the case of tumours inadvertently transmitted through organs other than kidney, the strategy is less well defined with regards to graft removal and management of immunosuppression.
Although re-transplantation has been attempted in some reports, the avoidance of tumour transmission has not always succeeded.