Immunosuppression in Organ Transplantation

Abstract

The search for effective and safe methods of suppressing the immune response has been evolving over four decades. Progress has been marked by many disappointments and a few forward leaps. Clinical organ transplantation has served as the proving ground for many of these advances, beginning in the early 1950s, shortly after a working model of the artificial kidney provided for the short-term maintenance of life in patients with end-stage renal disease. The first attempts to suppress the rejection response, with whole-body irradiation and bone marrow transplantation, were unsuccessful. Since then, there have been two main avenues of approach to the . . .