At Northwestern University (Chicago), Dr. Starzl begins developing liver and multiple organ transplantation in dogs.
At the University of Colorado, Dr. Starzl performs the first series of successful kidney transplants.
Dr. Starzl performs the first human liver transplant at the University of Colorado.
Dr. Starzl performs the first successful liver transplant at the University of Colorado.
Dr. Starzl joins the University of Pittsburgh and leads the team that performs Pittsburgh’s first liver transplants. Thirty transplants are performed that year in Pittsburgh, which leads to an influx of surgeons seeking to be trained in Pittsburgh under Dr. Starzl.
Clinical experience at the University of Pittsburgh significantly influences the FDA’s decision to approve cyclosporine.
The world’s first multiple organ transplant is performed at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, under the guidance of Dr. Starzl. A six-year old girl receives an intestine, liver, pancreas, and spleen.
On Valentine’s Day, Dr. Starzl participates in the world’s first heart and liver transplant on young Stormie Jones at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Starzl leads efforts that result in a National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference that deems liver transplantation an accepted treatment for end-stage liver disease.
Dr. Starzl and University of Pittsburgh researchers begin work to develop a new anti-rejection agent called FK-506.
Presbyterian University Hospital (now the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) becomes the first Medicare-approved liver transplant center.
University of Pittsburgh researchers announce clinical results of FK-506, finding it to be more effective than cyclosporine and having fewer side effects. These findings eventually improve survival rates for all organ transplants; allow successful intestine, lung, and pancreatic transplantation; and improve the quality of life of children receiving transplants.
Among the liver and small bowel transplants that Dr. Starzl and UPMC surgeons perform this year are an adult and a child, who are the world’s longest surviving liver and small bowel transplant recipients and who are living healthy normal lives to this day.
Dr. Starzl finds clues to organ acceptance in patients who were transplanted up to 29 years prior. He develops a theory involving chimerism – the co-existence of donor and recipient cells in the recipient – which changes the transplantation field’s conventional thinking about immune tolerance.
Dr. Starzl’s autobiography, The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon, is published.
FK-506, the drug developed by Dr. Starzl and University of Pittsburgh researchers, receives FDA approval.
The University of Pittsburgh Transplantation Institute is renamed in honor of Dr. Starzl.
The book 1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium places Dr. Starzl 213th on its list of those whose contributions have significantly shaped history’s progress.
Dr. Starzl is recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information (known now as Thomson Scientific) as the most cited scientist in clinical medicine, a measure of his work’s lasting utility and significance.
In a radical departure from the standard treatment of transplant patients, doctors from the University of Pittsburgh’s Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute introduce a new regimen that involves giving patients a single immunosuppressive agent and at lower doses. Some patients are able to take just one pill as little as once or twice a week.
Dr. Starzl is named a recipient of the 2004 President’s National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor.