Transplant Timeline – Kidney Transplants

1905: Xenotransplant – First Rabbit Kidney Grafted Into Human: French surgeon Dr. M. Princeteau grafts pieces of a rabbit kidney into a 16-year-old with kidney failure; the patient dies two weeks later.

1906: Xenotransplant – First Pig Kidney Grafted into Human: By joining the kidney to the blood vessels of her arm, French surgeon Dr. Mathieu Jaboulay grafts the kidney of a pig to a woman. She lives for one hour.

1909: Xenotransplant – First Non-Human Primate Kidney Grafted onto Human: Dr. Ernst Unger of Germany grafts the kidneys of a macaque onto the thigh of a woman. She dies 32 hours later.

1923: Xenotransplant – First Lamb Kidney Grafted into Human: Dr. Harold Neuhof grafts the kidney of a lamb into a human patient. The patient dies nine days later.

1945: First Temporary Kidney Transplant: In his 1990 Nobel Lecture, Dr. Joseph E. Murray (one of the surgeons involved in the 1954 first successful live donor kidney transplant), reported on a temporary cadaveric kidney transplant that took place at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham & Women's Hospital) in Boston: "The very first renal transplant in 1945 at the Brigham deserves special comment. The patient was a young woman in renal failure following obstetrical complications. The purpose of the transplant was to provide temporary renal function until her own kidneys recovered from acute tubular necrosis. … (T)he operation was performed … by Dr. Charles Hufnagel, then a Research Fellow working on vascular grafts, Dr. Ernest Landsteiner, then Chief Resident in Urology, and Dr. David Hume, then Assistant Resident in Surgery. … According to Dr. Robert J. Glaser, who was assistant resident on the medical service at that time, "secretion of urine was minimal, and certainly did not, 'rescue the woman from her crisis.' The kidney functioned poorly and only transiently, and the patient continued to have a stormy course, although fortunately, despite our lack of understanding at the time of how best to treat renal shutdown, she ultimately did respond and she left the hospital with normal renal function and in good health." … Dr. Glaser further reports that her happy state was short-lived because she died a few months later of fulminating hepatitis secondary to pooled plasma infusions which she had received in the course of her treatment."

1952: First Kidney Transplant: Dr. Hamburger and his team transplant the first human kidney. The kidney is taken from female traffic accident victim and transplanted into her son. The kidney initially functions well, until it is rejected 22 days later.

1954: First Successful Live Donor Kidney Transplant: Drs. Joseph E. Murray, Hartwell Harrison, David Hume, and John Merril perform the first successful kidney transplant at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham & Women's Hospital) in Boston. The transplant is from Ronald Herrick into his identical twin Richard. Richard Herrick lives for another eight years. Murray becomes one of the co-winners of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with E.D. Thomas "for their discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease."

1962: First Kidney Using Cadaveric Donor: New tissue typing techniques and immune suppression with drugs are used for the first time in a human kidney transplant of a cadaver donor at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham & Women's Hospital) in Boston.

1989: First Combination Heart, Liver, and Kidney Transplant: Surgeons at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, transplant a heart, liver, and kidney into a 26-year-old woman. She survives for four months.

1992: Xenotransplant – First Bone Marrow (and Kidney) Transplant from Non-Human Primate: University of Pittsburgh researchers transplant baboon bone marrow and a kidney into a patient. The patient dies 26 days later due to infection.

1995: Transplantation of All Abdominal Organs: In order to transplant a new kidney, pancreas, stomach, liver, large and small bowel, and one iliac artery, doctors at the University of Miami in Florida remove all abdominal organs from a patient with Gardner's syndrome.

1999: New Procedure to Enable Kidney Transplant: Researchers from the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore announce the development of a new procedure called High PRA Rescue (high panel reactive antibody rescue). High PRA can be developed after a pregnancy, a previous blood transfusion, or an earlier kidney transplant. The blood of individuals with High PRA (about 20% of people on the kidney transplant list) has high levels of rejection antibodies, putting sufferers at a greater risk of rejection than cell-mediated rejection. As the antibodies will react with a large portion of the population, the condition significantly increases their waiting time for a kidney.

The High PRA Rescue procedure involves plasmapheresis, in which patients are connected to a machine that removes their blood, separates the serum containing the antibodies, returns the red and white cells and platelets, and replaces the serum with a protein solution. Patients are also treated with three anti-rejection drugs.