Role of tacrolimus prolonged release in the prevention of allograft rejection

Peter Abrams, Abhinav Humar, Henkie P Tan

Department of Surgery, Thomas E Starzl Transplantation Institute, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract: Successful management of the solid-organ transplant recipient begins with prevention of rejection and achieving a balance between insufficient and excessive immunosuppression. Standard tacrolimus therapy for prevention of solid-organ transplant rejection consists of 2 divided doses per day. In an effort to simplify tacrolimus dosing to once daily, a new formulation (tacrolimus prolonged release [PR]) was chosen for its combination of a similar extent of bioavailability and a substantially reduced rate of clearance. Several clinical conversion studies have now been completed using PR to clarify its pharmacokinetics, efficacy at prevention of allograft rejection, and safety profiles in solid-organ transplant patients. A cohort of 67 stable kidney transplant recipients was converted from standard tacrolimus to PR in an open-label, multicenter study in the United States and Canada. A second open-label, multicenter study was performed in liver transplant recipients with stable graft function on standard tacrolimus therapy converted to PR. A third conversion study was performed as an open-label study at 5 centers in the United States in stable pediatric liver transplant recipients. As medication noncompliance can significantly contribute to the incidence of graft rejection and graft loss in transplant recipients, a potentially significant advance in the transplant community’s ongoing mission to optimize prevention of rejection occurred with the development of a once-daily tacrolimus PR. The results of these preliminary studies suggest that select solid-organ transplant recipients converted to PR can be safely maintained using the same monitoring and patient care techniques historically used for standard tacrolimus therapy.

Keywords: immunosuppression, tacrolimus allograft, organ transplant, rejection