[The role of the French Agence de la biomédecine in lung transplantation].

The Agence de la biomédecine is a public institution in charge of organs tissues cells transplantation, reproduction, embryology and genetics. It interacts with the hospital coordinators and the transplant teams and ensure the regulation of organ retrieval and allocation. Its strategic missions are the revision of the graft allocation rules and the optimization of transplant organization. These last years, after redefining the graft selection criteria, the activity of lung transplantation increased drastically. The lung procurement efficacy must be still improved, while various machines of perfusion are going to be available. In July 2007, a national priority status for the patients with a life-threatening condition in the very short-term was put in place. The use of a graft allocation score taking into account the urgency and the individual benefit from transplantation is in evaluation. The optimization of the patient access to the waiting list needs a network approach of the end-stage lung diseases.