12 Month Athena Study: Everolimus vs. Standard Regimen in de Novo Kidney Transplant Patients

12 Month, Multi-center, Open-label, Prospective, Randomized, Parallel Group Study Investigating a Standard Regimen in de Novo Kidney Transplant Patients Versus a Certican® Based Regimen Either in Combination With Cyclosporin A or Tacrolimus

This study was designed to evaluate the renal function comparing Certican based immunosuppressive regimens with two different CNIs (Tacrolimus or Cyclosporin A) versus a standard treatment with Mycophenolic Acid and Tacrolimus in de novo renal transplant recipients.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patient who had received a primary or secondary kidney transplant
• Patients who were willing and from whom written informed consent was obtained
• kidney allograft with a cold ischemia time (CIT) < 30 hours
• negative pregnancy test prior to study enrollment

Exclusion Criteria:

--Multi-organ recipients

• former Graft loss due to immunological reasons
• Patients who received a kidney from a non-heart beating donor
• A-B-0 incompatible transplants
• a current Panel Reactive Antibody (PRA) level of > 20%
• existing antibodies against the HLA-type of the receiving transplant
• a known hypersensitivity/contraindication to any of the immunosuppressants
• Use of other investigational drugs
• Patients with thrombocytopenia (platelets < 100,000/mm³), with an absolute neutrophil count of < 2,000/mm³ or leucopenia (leucocytes < 3,000/mm³), or hemoglobin < 8 g/dL
• significant mental illness
• history of malignancy during the last five years
• HIV positive
• uncontrolled hypercholesterolemia or hypertriglyceridemia
• drug or alcohol abuse
• pregnant or breast feeding women