Thomas Starzl

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Lore & Background

Thomas Starzl was born on March 11, 1926, in Le Mars, Iowa, the son of newspaper editor and science fiction writer Roman Frederick Starzl and teacher and nurse Anna Laura Fitzgerald. Of German and Irish descent, he was the second of four siblings. Originally intending to become a priest, he changed plans drastically when his mother died from breast cancer in 1947. He briefly served in the United States Navy Reserve after graduating from Le Mars High School in 1944. He attended Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in biology, then Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, where he received a Master of Science in anatomy (1950) and earned both a Doctor of Philosophy in neurophysiology and an M.D. with distinction (1952). While in medical school, he established a long friendship with Professor Loyal Davis, MD, a neurosurgeon whose wife's daughter from her first marriage was Nancy Reagan. Starzl spent an extra year completing his doctorate in neurophysiology and wrote a seminal paper describing a technique to record electrical responses of deep brain structures to sensory stimuli; the paper was highly cited, referenced in 384 articles by January 2019. He gained a Markle scholarship in 1959. After obtaining his medical degree, he trained in surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, conducting lab and animal research with a keen interest in liver biology.

Reader's Guide

Thomas Starzl's significance lies in his foundational role in organ transplantation. He performed the first human liver transplant in 1963, and the first successful human liver transplant in 1967, both at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He established the clinical utility of ciclosporin (cyclosporine) in 1982, and tacrolimus in 1991, both leading to Food and Drug Administration approval. He developed multiple technical advances in organ preservation, organ procurement, and organ transplant; delineated the indications and limitations of abdominal organ transplantation; and defined the underlying basis for organ transplantation as a treatment of inherited metabolic diseases, providing the rationale for gene therapy efforts, specifically for familial hypercholesterolemia as in the case of Stormie Jones. He recognized the causative role of immunosuppression in the development of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease and other opportunistic infections and the utility of reversing the immunosuppressed state as the principal treatment. He performed the first simultaneous heart and liver transplant on six-year-old Stormie Jones at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in 1984. He proposed microchimerism in organ transplant tolerance. His work was cited more than any other researcher in the world; between 1981 and June 1998, he was cited 26,456 times. He received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science (2004, presented by President George W. Bush in 2006), the Lasker Award (2012), and the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences (2016). He was named one of the most important people of the Millennium, ranking No. 213. The University of Pittsburgh renamed one of its newest medical research buildings the Thomas E. Starzl Biomedical Science Tower in 2006, and a statue honoring him was unveiled on June 24, 2018 on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

Did You Know?

• Starzl originally intended to become a priest, but changed plans after his mother died from breast cancer in 1947.
• His autobiographical memoir, The Puzzle People, was written in three months and named by The Wall Street Journal as the third best book on doctors' lives.
• He performed the first simultaneous heart and liver transplant on six-year-old Stormie Jones at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in 1984.
• Between 1981 and June 1998, his work was cited 26,456 times, more than any other researcher in the world.
• A statue honoring Starzl was unveiled on the University of Pittsburgh campus on June 24, 2018.