Cyclosporin A as a tool for experimental and clinical transplantation

Cyclosporin A is a new agent that is immunosuppressive, lacks myelotoxicity and seems capable of inducing specific transplantation tolerance. It prevents the development of cytotoxic effector T-cells by interfering with the complex interleukin-2 system yet permits the establishment of suppressor T-cells in antigen driven proliferation systems in vitro, thus possibly inducing operational tolerance. Although preclinical transplant studies as well as non-controlled clinical transplant studies have shown impressive results, controlled clinical studies could only in a few situations demonstrate the superiority of Cyclosporin A over conventional immunosuppressive regimens. Further studies are needed to establish the role of this new drug in experimental and clinical transplantation.