Poor long term patient survival (60% at 2 years) in lung allograft recipients are mainly due to rejection and complications associated with the use of nonspecific immunosuppressants. Better means to achieve waft acceptance is desperately needed. 1 have investigated whether mixed allogeneic chimerism in the form of bone marrow stem cell engraftment would induce donor-specific tolerance for lung allografts. Fisher (F344) and Wistar Forth (WF)rats were lethally irradiated (1100c0y) and reconstituted with a mixture of T-cell depleted syngeneic and allogeneic bone marrow (F344+WFIWF, ACI +F344- F344). After Mixed chimerism was documented by peripheral blood Ipnphocyte typing at 28 days, orthotopic left single lung transplantation was performed, using donor-s ecific or third party allografts. No immunosuppressants were administered. Graft rejection was monitored by chest rentgenography, and con- firmed by histology Mixed chimeric rats accepted lung allografts permanently, and it was not strain specific effect. Tolerance was all or none phenomenon which had nothing to do with the percentage of chimerlsm. Mixed chimeras rejected third party allografts in less than 10 days, a time course similar to that of unmanipulated controls. No acute or chronic rejection was observed in donor specific grafts more than 150 days posttransplant. These data suggest that mixed chimerism in the form of bone marrow stem cell engraftment results in stable, systemic donor-specific transplantation tolerance for lung allografts.