History of Erythropoietin development

1878: Bert and Jourdanet described symptoms of anemia and mountain sickness from hypoxia
1906: Carnot and Deflandre observed that serum from an anemic donor rabbit injected in normal rabbits resulted in increased erythropoiesis.  It was initially called hematopoietin: potential circulating factor
1953: Erslev demonstrated that plasma from anemic rabbits contained a factor capable of stimulating erythropoiesis and predicted its potential as a treatment modality. Did a quantitative infusion study regarding this notion as well.
1957: Jacobson and other such as Goldwasser found that the kidney was the source of this hormone that controlled the production via experiments with each organ being removed in animals.
1985: Few milligrams of erythropoietin from over 2.5L of urine of patients with aplastic anemia was collected and purified by Miyake et al
1985: The human erythropoietin gene was cloned
1985: Eshbach et al had the the first treatment of someone with initially just 2.5 units/kg on dialysis followed by no response and then increased dose of 15 units/kg with good response leading to potential treatment success.
1985: Mass effort to large scale production
1989: FDA approves recombinant EPO for use in chronic renal failure patients on dialysis
1990: FDA approves recombinant EPO for use in chronic renal failure without dialysis and other non renal causes.

A good references that summarize as above is
http://www.nephrologyrounds.org/crus/nephUS_0304.pdf