Demonstrating the strength of its 20 year commitment to improving transplant patients' lives, Novartis will present more than 50 abstracts on existing products and developmental compounds at the fifth annual American Transplant Congress (ATC) next week in Boston.

The data presented provide new insights into Novartis Transplantation's research strategies and the potential of Novartis' products to enhance therapeutic choices for transplant physicians and patients.

"Our goal is to provide treatment options that meet the needs of individual patients - resulting in more successful transplants, better outcomes, safer therapies and longer, healthier lives for the transplant patients," said Tony Rosenberg, Head, Transplantation and Immunology Business Unit, Novartis Pharma AG. "For the transplant patient, it is no longer just a question of life, it is a question of living."

Novartis helped revolutionize the transplant field two decades ago by introducing Sandimmune (cyclosporin). Novartis now provides physicians and patients with the largest selection of innovative transplant therapies of any pharmaceutical company, including the world's most widely prescribed anti-rejection product, Neoral (cyclosporin for microemulsion), the recently approved myfortic (enteric coated mycophenolate sodium) film tablets and Certican (everolimus) which received European Mutual Recognition in 15 countries in December 2003.

"The introduction of cyclosporin 20 years ago revolutionized transplant patients' survival," said Russell H. Wiesner, M.D., president, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). "As a result, many more people with organ failure became viable candidates for transplantation and there has been a dramatic increase in the number of organ transplants performed annually worldwide over the last two decades."

Today there are currently around 4,60,000 de novo and maintenance transplant patients alive worldwide. Novartis has continued to fuel advances in the science of transplantation with the introduction of a range of products including Simulect (basiliximab).

Although transplantation has achieved great successes over the past 20 years, there are still advances that can be made to improve patients' quality of life. Novartis' aim is to enhance transplant patients' therapy with the introduction of innovative therapies.

"Every day I am both amazed and thankful for Novartis' ongoing research and introduction of new treatments that continue to improve the lives of transplant recipients," said Meghan Kelly, mother and living donor of liver transplant recipient, Thomas Kelly. "It has been nearly five years since my son's transplant surgery and thanks to novel therapies, not only does Thomas now live a normal life for a six year old, but sometimes, I almost forget that he needs to be taking medicine daily."

The Novartis Transplantation and Immunology Team is committed to developing a new and innovative range of therapeutic products for the prophylaxis of organ rejection in order to provide the most extensive choice of drugs to the transplant community and to maintain Novartis' role as a global market leader in this field of medicine.