The co-development of liver and kidney transplantation (1955-1967)

Between 1955 and the end of 1967, the framework of clinical transplantation that exists today was established in a small number of centers in continental Europe, Great Britain, and the United States. At first, the primary organ was the kidney, but efforts to transplant the kidney soon strongly influenced the development of liver and ultimately all other kinds of organ transplantation. This paper reviews the pertinent history of these developments as outlined in a lecture given in January 2003 in Bangkok on the occasion of the Prince Mahidol Award for a life's work in the field of organ transplantation

The changing immunology of organ transplantation

The engrafted organ becomes a chimera as the recipient's leukocytes station themselves in the transplant. Remarkably, the recipient becomes chimeric as well, in a reverse migration involving immune cells from the graft. Interactions between donor and recipient cells are tolerogenic-a process with implications for the goal of graft acceptance with minimal immunosuppression