The use of a pig liver xenograft for temporary support of a patient with fulminant hepatic failure.

A 26-year-old female patient with fulminant hepatic failure and a history of autoimmune hepatitis was heterotopically transplanted with a pig hepatic xenograft to provide temporary metabolic support prior to transplantation with a human donor organ. Circulating natural antipig antibodies were removed prior to transplantation by plasmapheresis and ex vivo en bloc perfusion of the donor pig kidneys. The liver xenograft functioned after transplantation as measured by active bile production, stabilization of prothrombin levels, and reduction in the circulating levels of lactic acid and the enzymes AST and ALT.

The synergism of brequinar sodium and cyclosporine used in combination to prevent cardiac allograft rejection in the rat.

Brequinar sodium (BQR) is a novel immunosuppressive drug that inhibits cell proliferation by virtue of its disruption of the de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis. The basis of the immunosuppressive activity of BQR is distinctively different from that of cyclosporine (CsA), and we have recently evaluated in vivo and in vitro the efficacy of the two drugs when used in combination. Subtherapeutic doses of BQR and CsA were tested for their ability to prolong heterotopic cardiac allograft survival in the MHC- and non-MHC-mismatched ACI-->LEW rat strain combination.