HGF and graft versus host disease: We recently demonstrated that repeated transfection of the human HGF gene into skeletal muscle induced continuous production of HGF, strongly inhibited acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT), and protected against thymic damage caused by GVHD in a well-characterized mouse model of GVHD [15,16].