TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022210.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 87 lines

                                                                                NOBEL PRIZES, Page 62

A Pair of Lifesavers


Pioneering physicians who made transplants a reality


    MEDICINE

    The transplanting of organs and tissues -- hearts, kidneys,
lungs, bone marrow -- has become such an accepted part of
medical practice that it is hard to remember when the technique
was considered highly dubious. But as recently as the early
1950s, many doctors thought transplants would never be
possible.

    Thanks to breakthroughs by a few researchers, the doubts
have long since vanished. Last week the Nobel committee
recognized two of those early pioneers. The Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine will go to Joseph Murray of Boston's
Brigham and Women's Hospital, who performed the first
successful transplant of a human organ -- a kidney -- in 1954,
and to E. Donnall Thomas of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle, who in 1956 was the first to transfer bone
marrow from one person to another. They will split
approximately $700,000.

    The award was something of a departure for the committee.
It usually recognizes basic medical research, like the
discovery of the structure of DNA, rather than clinical
treatments. But in this case, the benefit to humanity, a
primary consideration, was clear: Murray's and Thomas'
discoveries are "crucial for those tens of thousands of severely
ill patients who either can be cured or given a decent life
when other treatment methods are without success," read the
committee's citation.

    Dr. Murray became intrigued with the idea of transplants
during a stint as a plastic surgeon in World War II. "We took
care of thousands of casualties, many with severe burns," he
recalls. "I was performing skin grafts and became interested
in why skin wouldn't graft permanently." Such grafts did work,
however, on identical twins, and Murray suspected that the same
might be true for internal organs. After experimenting on dogs,
he performed his first kidney transplants between twins, and
as expected, the recipient's immune system did not reject the
new organ as an invader. Later, Murray experimented with drugs
that suppressed the immune system and thus allowed transplants
from close relatives and even unrelated cadavers.

    Dr. Thomas' focus was on leukemia, at the time an inevitably
fatal cancer of blood-forming tissues. Because blood cells are
generated by bone marrow, he reasoned that replacing a
patient's marrow with that of a healthy donor might arrest the
disease. Like Murray, he worked first on dogs, destroying the
animals' own marrow with radiation, then transplanting new
cells through the blood. He too found that at first the only
successes in humans came with identical twins -- and that
immunosuppressive drugs, as well as careful tissue matching,
could overcome rejection.

    After his work on kidneys, Murray returned to his original
specialty, concentrating on plastic and reconstructive surgery
for children born with facial deformities. Thomas went on to
become the director of on cology at the Hutchinson Center. The
two doctors' strongest boosters may be each other. They first
met during their residencies at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital
(now part of Brigham and Women's  Hospital) in Boston in the
late 1940s, and have remained friends ever since. Says Thomas
of his colleague's prize: "I thought that was wonderful news.
I've admired his work for years." Concurs Murray: "It doubles
the pleasure. I couldn't be happier."


By Michael D. Lemonick. Reported by Margaret Emery/San
Francisco.