Tens of thousands of patients languish on the organ donor waiting lists–and may wait forever because their immune systems will reject any transplanted organ that is not a match.

Now, in a large national study that experts are calling revolutionary, the New York Times reports researchers have found a way to end the anguish using a new procedure.

"In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients' immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor."

(READ the full article in the New York Times)