Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transported from a donor site to another location. Organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body are called autografts. Transplants that are recently performed between two subjects of the same species are called allografts. Allografts can either be from a living or cadaveric source.
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954.
Edward Donnall "Don" Thomas was an American physician, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, and director emeritus of the clinical research division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In 1990 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Joseph E. Murray for the development of cell and organ transplantation. Thomas and his wife and research partner Dottie Thomas developed bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for leukemia.
Dr. A. M. James Shapiro is a British-Canadian surgeon best known for leading the clinical team that developed the Edmonton Protocol – an islet transplant procedure for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Shapiro is Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Surgical Oncology at the University of Alberta and the Director of the Clinical Islet Transplant Program and the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program with Alberta Health Services.
Sir Roy Yorke Calne was a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. He was part of the team that performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, the world's first liver, heart and lung transplantation in 1987, the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992 and the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney cluster transplantation in 1994.
Stormie Dawn Jones was the world's first recipient of a successful simultaneous heart and liver organ transplant.
UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP), popularly known simply as Children's, is part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the only hospital in Greater Pittsburgh dedicated solely to the care of infants, children, teens and young adults through around age 26. UPMC Children's also sometimes treats older adults that require pediatric care. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and features a state-verified level 1 pediatric trauma center, one of four in the state. CHP also has a rooftop helipad for emergent transport of pediatric patients.
Ignazio Roberto Maria Marino is an Italian transplant surgeon who was Mayor of Rome from 2013 to 2015.
Paul Ichiro Terasaki was an American scientist in the field of human organ transplant technology, and professor emeritus of surgery at UCLA School of Medicine.
Ronald D. Guttmann MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1936 and received his post secondary school education at the University of Minnesota, receiving a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in 1958, and a B.S. and M.D. degree in 1961. He did his Medical Internship at the University of California San Francisco, military service in the USNR at the Tissue Bank, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Medical Residency on the II & IV (Harvard) Medical Service at Boston City Hospital, and a Research & Clinical Fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital(now Brigham & Women's Hospital) and Harvard Medical School. In 1969, he was appointed associate in medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and permanently moved to Montreal, Canada in 1970 to become director of the transplantation service at the Royal Victoria Hospital and McGill University Clinic and associate professor of medicine, McGill University Faculty of Medicine. During his academic career he directed an active basic and clinical research laboratory program focused on transplantation immunobiology, immunogenetics, immunosuppression, and long term-complications of transplant patients. He also developed an interest in social and ethical issues of transplantation, organ shortage, and human rights abuses.
Mehmet Haberal, is the founder of Başkent University in Ankara, Turkey, best known for becoming the first transplant surgeon in Turkey after leading the team that performed Turkey's first living-related kidney transplant in 1975, after he returned from surgical training under the mentorship of American surgeon Thomas Starzl, with whom he also performed some of the longest surviving early liver transplantations.
Dr. Velma Scantlebury GCM also Velma Scantlebury-White is a Barbadian-born American transplant surgeon. She was the first Black woman transplant surgeon in the United States. She has received many honors in her career, having been named to both the "Best Doctors in America" and "Top Doctors in America" lists multiple times.
William G. Kaelin Jr. is an American Nobel laureate physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His laboratory studies tumor suppressor proteins. In 2016, Kaelin received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Award. He also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019 along with Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.
Pankaj Chandak is an Indian-born British surgeon who made innovations in the use of 3D printing in paediatric kidney transplant surgery. He has also undertaken work in education, public engagement, presenting demonstrations, and acting in The Crown television series. He graduated from Guy's and St Thomas' University of London medical school and was an anatomy demonstrator under Professor Harold Ellis CBE.
Rose Marie Toussaint is a practicing Black woman liver transplant surgeon in the United States.
René Küss was a French urologist and transplant surgeon who made pioneering contributions in renal tract surgery and kidney transplantation with the establishment of transplant programs. At a time of unavoidable transplant rejection, he was involved in two particularly historic transplant operations. The first was a human-to-human extraperitoneal kidney transplant procedure in 1951 and later a pig-to-human kidney transplant in 1966, both of which ended in abrupt rejection. He later introduced kidney transplantation schedules involving at first irradiation, later immunosuppressants, living-related and unrelated donors and later organs from deceased donors.
Ernesto Pompeo Molmenti is an American transplant surgeon, scientist, and author. Currently practicing in Long Island, New York. He is Chief of Surgical Innovation and Vice-Chairman of the Department of Surgery at North Shore University Hospital / Northwell Health, and Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Pediatrics at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He is known for his description of the “Syndromic Incidence of Ovarian Cancer after Liver Transplantation, with Special Reference to Anteceding Breast Cancer,” and for the development of the vascular reconstruction technique that has been named "Molmenti technique".
UPMC Presbyterian, often referred to locally as Presby, is a 900-bed non-profit research and academic hospital located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, providing tertiary care for the Western Pennsylvania region and beyond. It comprises the Presbyterian campus of the combined UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside hospital entity. It is the largest hospital in Pennsylvania as of 2018.
Carl-Gustav Groth was a Swedish transplant surgeon. He studied in Colorado under the supervision of transplantation pioneer Thomas Starzl, and returned to Sweden to work at the Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital, where he performed the first pancreas, liver and islet cell transplantation surgeries in Sweden.
Russell Walker Strong, is an Australian transplant surgeon. He pioneered several techniques for liver transplantation, including reduced-size liver transplantation, split-liver transplantation, and living donor liver transplantation.
