Transplantation Medicine: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

In the 68 years between the first human solid organ transplant and the present, the number of these transplanted organs has reached one million, tracking at about 40,000 more annually. Looking ahead are the prospects for growing transplantable organs outside the body. The arc of this story extends from Alexis Carrell and Charles Lindbergh’s experiments with tissue culture, to Joseph Murray and Thomas Starzl’s surgical trials, to Jean Dausset and Peter Medawar’s discoveries about immune tolerance and rejection, and pushing into the future of regenerative medicine, to bioengineers Shinya Yamanaka, James Thomson, Anthony Atala, and Toshiro Sato– highlighting a few among many.

Keywords

• Anastomosis
• 3D Tissue Culture
• Organ Transplantation
• Immunsuppression
• Hematopoiesis
• Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells