India, March 9 -- Currently used Food and Drug Administration-approved transplant drugs - with the addition of an also already FDA-approved complement inhibitor - are the optimal immunosuppression regimen for pig-to-human kidney transplants, according to a landmark discovery by University of Alabama at Birmingham investigators. The peer-reviewed research is published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

"These findings establish the ideal immunosuppression regimen for pig-to-human kidney xenotransplantation, and it is a regimen that is already FDA-approved and that we routinely use for human-to-human allotransplantation," said Jayme Locke, professor of surgery in UAB's Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine and lead author of t...