Abstract
More than 200,000 people in the world currently need life-saving organ transplants. Transplantation medicine is the one field of medicine that requires a third party, which is why so much effort is put into ensuring that transplanted organs survive as long as possible. The history of organ transplantation is the story of a battle with immunity, and pharmacological agents have done much to help physicians and patients gain the upper hand in this struggle. This paper provides an overview of the contributions pharmacological agents have made in the history of organ transplantation, with a focus on the field’s early history
Highlights
The need for organ transplants is increasing worldwide
In 2012, 120,000 people in the United States (US), 63,800 people in the European Union (EU), and 13,000 people Japan were waiting for organ donations [1,2,3]
cyclosporin A (CyA) greatly reduced rejection rates, but the only aspect understood about its mode of action was that it “ suppresses helper T cell activity in the resting phase, which suppresses the binding of interleukin-2 and other cytokines”
Summary
The need for organ transplants is increasing worldwide. The ongoing lack of available organs has resulted in an increase in the number of patients on waiting lists. In 1906, Carrel performed a renal transplant on a dog using the patching method; the procedure was successful to the extent that urine appeared 30 minutes after surgery and the animal survived for 8 days [5]. He continued his experiments on animals, at one time saying, “From a surgical standpoint the problem of the graft of organs can be considered as having been solved. Several immunosuppressive agents are used in patients undergoing organ transplantation such as steroids, azathioprine, mizoribine, tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetil, sirolimus, everolimus, basiliximab, daclizumab, muromonab-CD3, and CyA. CyA was an epoch-making discovery in the field of transplantation medicine, ushering in what has been called the “cyclosporine era”
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