Abstract
On the way (my way) to clinical xenogeneic heart transplantation. Presented at the 15th biannual IXA meeting, Munich, October 11, 2019.
Highlights
The first heart replacement in humans was a xenograft
During most of the 1960s till the first half of the 1980s, xenotransplantation remained one of his main interests—and that of his consultant and chief investigator Claus Hammer (1940-2015). The latter characterized preformed natural antibodies (PNABs)[4] in sera of 48 species from seven zoological orders and investigated more than 8300 combinations of serum samples and antigens of 111 individuals. His key finding was that PNABs were absent or low between the species within a zoological family such as domestic dogs, foxes and dingos; domestic cats, lions, and tigers; and man and old world monkeys
PNABs were augmented across divergent species; corresponding experiments yielded discouraging results since the grafts never functioned longer than a few hours, in spite of aggressive additional treatments with either lymphatic drainage or plasmapheresis.[7]
Summary
The first heart replacement in humans was a xenograft. On January 23, 1964, James Hardy (1918-2003) from Mississippi, USA, removed the heart of a dying 68-year-old adult and replaced it with the organ of a small chimpanzee.
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