First-ever pig kidney transplant performed on a living human

Surgeons successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a 62-year-old man with end-stage renal disease. Recipient Richard Suleiman is recovering well and is expected to be discharged from the hospital soon, just a few days after surgery.

Is this your first pig kidney transplant?

This is the first time a pig kidney has been transplanted into a living human, marking a major milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, or transplanting animal organs into humans.

“This successful transplant is the culmination of decades of hard work by thousands of scientists and doctors.” Tatsuo Kawai At Massachusetts General Hospital statement. “Our hope is that this transplant approach will provide a lifeline to the millions of patients around the world suffering from kidney failure.”

However, strictly speaking, this is not the first time a kidney has been transplanted from a pig to a human. This surgery has been performed five times in the past, each time on a person declared brain dead and placed on life support. The most recent of these was conducted by Robert Montgomery and colleagues at New York University Langone Health in July 2023. The kidney continued to function for over a month with no signs of rejection or infection.

When was the surgery performed?

Kawai and his colleagues performed the surgery on March 16th. reported that the procedure lasted four hours, and shortly thereafter the kidneys began producing urine and the waste product creatinine. new york times. Suleiman was also able to stop dialysis, which is a further indication that his kidneys are functioning properly.

Where do pig kidneys come from?

The organs were donated by the pharmaceutical company EGenesis. The company breeds pigs that are genetically engineered to carry certain human genes and lack a specific set of pig genes that are harmful to humans. These genetic modifications reduce the chance of transplant rejection, where the immune system attacks the organ and causes it to malfunction. Suleiman is also being given a cocktail of immunosuppressants to further reduce this risk. So far, there are no signs of rejection and Suleiman is able to walk on his own. His doctors hope he will be discharged soon.

What do we know about the recipient?

Suleiman has type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease. He had previously received a human kidney from a donor in December 2018. However, the organ showed signs of malfunctioning after about five years. He started dialysis in May last year, but complications arose, and he needed to go to the hospital every two weeks. This seriously affected his quality of life while awaiting his second transplant.

is more than 100,000 people in the US They are waiting for organ transplants, and 17 of them die every day. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the experimental transplant for Suleiman due to a lack of other treatment options.

“I saw it as a way not only to help me but also to give hope to the thousands of people who need transplants to survive,” Suleiman said in a statement.

Have xenotransplant surgeries involving other organs been performed?

Only two other people received xenotransplants, and both received genetically modified pig hearts. The first, a man named David Bennett, died two months later from complications believed to be caused by a swine virus called porcine cytomegalovirus. So scientists genetically inactivated a virus similar to the pig virus from which Suleiman's kidneys came.

The second recipient, a man named Lawrence Fawcett, died six weeks later from transplant rejection.