historyWellcome Collection1954 · Boston, USA
An identical twin's kidney gave his brother a second life in 1954, the first successful organ transplant
In December 1954, Richard Herrick, whose kidneys were failing, received a kidney from his identical twin, Ronald, at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Transplants had failed for decades because the recipient's immune system attacked the new organ. Researchers had noticed that skin grafts from an identical twin lasted indefinitely, since the body did not treat the tissue as foreign. Surgeon Joseph Murray used this principle, and the kidney worked straight away. Richard lived eight more years, and the operation opened the era of organ transplants.
The immune system recognises foreign tissue by its molecular markers and produces antibodies and immune cells that attack it. Identical twins share essentially the same genetic markers, so the body accepts the donated kidney as its own. Without that match, early transplants were rejected within days or weeks. Later drugs suppressed the immune response, which made transplants from unrelated donors possible.
The operation proved that organ transplants could work, and it led to the immunosuppressive drugs that later made them routine. Almost every transplant performed today follows from this breakthrough.
Skin grafting came first: grafts from close relatives were rejected more slowly than those from strangers, and identical-twin grafts lasted indefinitely. The same logic of genetic matching now guides donor selection for every organ transplant.
Richard Herrick later married one of the nurses who looked after him, and they had two children.
background
Kidney transplant or renal transplant is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage kidney disease (ESRD). Kidney transplant is typically classified as deceased-donor (formerly known as cadaveric) or living-donor transplantation depending on the source of the donor organ. Living-donor kidney transplants are further characterized as genetically related (living-related) or non-related (living-unrelated) transplants, depending on whether a biological relationship exists between the donor and recipient. The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 by a team including Joseph Murray, the recipient's surgeon, and Hartwell Harrison, surgeon for the donor. Murray was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for this and other work. In 2018, an estimated 95,479 kidney transplants were performed worldwide, 36% of which came from living donors.
From Wikipedia: Kidney transplantation (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗
Wellcome Collection · CC BY 4.0
Illustrative photo · Rmarlin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
