Donor pre-treatment with tacrolimus reduces transplant vasculopathy.

We tested whether transplant arteriosclerosis can be reduced by pre-treatment of the donor with immunosuppressive agents, using a rat allogeneic aorta transplantation model. Donor rats received no pre-treatment, or tacrolimus, methylprednisolone, rapamycin, or mycofenolate mofetil (MMF) 16 and 2h before explantation of the grafts. Eight weeks after transplantation, aorta allografts were harvested.