Transplant Timeline – Xenotransplants

1668: First successful bone graft: Dutchman Job van Meeneren documents the use of a bone graft from a dog's skull to repair a defect in a human cranium.

1682: Another, or the same bone graft but different date?: A bone from a dog is reportedly used to repair the skull of an injured Russian aristocrat (who is later said to have had the bone removed because of threats of excommunication from the church).

1905: First Rabbit Kidney Grafted Into Human: French surgeon Dr. M. Princeteau grafts pieces of a rabbit kidney into a 16-year-old with kidney failure; the patient dies two weeks later.

1906: First Pig Kidney Grafted into Human: By joining the kidney to the blood vessels of her arm, French surgeon Dr. Mathieu Jaboulay grafts the kidney of a pig to a woman. She lives for one hour.

1909: First Non-Human Primate Kidney Grafted onto Human: Dr. Ernst Unger of Germany grafts the kidneys of a macaque onto the thigh of a woman. She dies 32 hours later.

1920: First Monkey Testicles Transplanted into Human: At his clinic in France, Dr. Serge Voronoff transplants monkey testicles into a man. By the early 1930s, more than 500 men are reported to have received transplanted testicles.

1923: First Lamb Kidney Grafted into Human: Dr. Harold Neuhof grafts the kidney of a lamb into a human patient. The patient dies nine days later.

1964: First Heart Transplant of Non-Human Primate into Human: Dr. James D. Hardy, of the University of Mississippi in Jackson, uses the heart of a chimp named Bino to transplant into 68-year-old Boyd Rush. The heart is too small to maintain independent circulation and functions for only 90 minutes.

1968: First Attempted Pig Heart Transplant: Dr. Ross of the National Heart Hospital in London, England, attempts the transplant of a pig heart into a patient, but the heart ceases functioning in minutes.

1969-1974: First Transplants of Non-Human Primate Livers: Dr. Thomas E. Starzl of the University of Colorado in Denver transplants chimpanzee livers into children. The survival rate ranges from one to 14 days.

1992: First Pig Liver Transplant(s): Doctors at Duke University use pig liver as a "bridge" to keep two women alive while awaiting liver transplants. In one patient, the liver is kept outside the body and hooked to the liver arteries – she survives long enough to receive a human liver. In the other, the pig liver is implanted beside her own liver and she lives for 32 hours.

1992: First Bone Marrow (and Kidney) Transplant from Non-Human Primate: University of Pittsburgh researchers transplant baboon bone marrow and a kidney into a patient. The patient dies 26 days later due to infection.

A more famous baboon bone marrow case is the 1995 transplant on Jeff Getty. In July 1995, scientists receive FDA approval to do the transplant on Getty, who has AIDS, in the hopes that the immune cells in the baboon's marrow would replace those Getty had lost to AIDS (baboon cells are naturally resistant to HIV.) On December 14, 1995, Getty receives two types of cells (immature stem cells and newly discovered facilitator cells) in a procedure performed by Dr. Suzanne Ildstad at San Francisco General Hospital. The cells function only for a brief time. Getty survived almost 11 more years, dying of heart failure on October 9, 2006.

1995: Fetal Pig Cell Brain Cell Transplants: Dr. James Schumacher, a research fellow at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, a Harvard-affiliated facility, performs the first transplant of fetal pig brain cells into 57-year-old Tony Johnson, a Parkinson's patient. After the surgery, Johnson's movements become smoother and his speech is clearer.