Tufts University: 175 Years of Innovation

Longtime Tufts Professor of Medicine and Chief of Hematology Robert S. Schwartz was a pioneer in the medical arena of organ transplantation. He conducted seminal studies on 6-mercaptopurine in 1959, beginning a new specialty of immunosuppression which dramatically accelerated the advancement of the field. During the ‘50s and ‘60s graft rejection was almost universal; the first case of a patient surviving an organ transplant had only occurred in 1959. Dr. Schwartz’s work focused on the use of 6-mercaptopurine on rabbits following skin graft transplants, observing how the chemical increased their immune systems’ tolerance to protein antigens and increased long-term survival. His findings were used to identify similar chemical methods of immunosuppression which would eventually be used for human patients.