Chinese researchers announce successful liver transplants from pigs into brain dead patients

Chinese researchers have made progress in the field of inter-animal organ transplantation with a successful pig kidney transplant reported on Wednesday. They believe that pig liver may also prove to be useful in the future.

This Chinese patient is the third person worldwide known to be living with gene-edited pig kidneys. The research team has also successfully experimented with implanting pig liver into brain-dead individuals.

Scientists are genetically modifying pigs to make their organs more human-like in the hopes of addressing the shortage of organ transplants. While previous xenografts in the US were short-lived, two recipients of pig kidneys – an Alabama woman in November and a New Hampshire man in January – have shown promising results. Clinical trials in the US are now commencing.

Nearly three weeks after the kidney transplant, the Chinese patient is reported to be doing “very well” with the pig kidneys functioning effectively, according to Dr. Lin Wang of Xijing Hospital. The patient is a 69-year-old woman who has been suffering from kidney failure for eight years.

The next challenge for xenotransplantation is learning to transplant pig livers. In an experiment reported on Wednesday, pig liver was successfully transplanted into a brain-dead individual for 10 days. While the pig liver produced bile and albumin, essential for basic organ function, it did not perform as well as a human liver.

Dr. Wang believes that the pig liver could potentially support a failing human liver to some extent. In the US, a similar approach is being studied by pig developer Egenesis, where a pig’s liver is externally attached to support a brain-dead individual’s liver function.

In China, the team led by Dr. Wang did not remove the deceased person’s own liver but instead implanted the pig liver nearby.

Dr. Parsia Vagefi, a liver transplant surgeon, commented on the experiment, stating that while it shows promise, there are still many questions that need answers. Dr. Wang’s team plans to analyze the results of another brain-dead individual who received a pig liver transplant.

Last year, another Chinese hospital reportedly transplanted a pig liver into a living patient after removing part of their cancerous liver, but the outcome of the experiment is unclear.