This is the first time a kidney transplant has been performed on a living person
Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital
Surgeons successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a 62-year-old man with end-stage renal disease. Recipient Richard Slayman is recovering well and is expected to be discharged from the hospital a few days after surgery.
Is this the first pig kidney transplant?
This is the first time a pig kidney has been transplanted into a living human, making it an important milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, the transplantation of animal organs into humans.
“The success of this transplant is the culmination of decades of work by thousands of scientists and doctors.” Tatsuo Kawai at Massachusetts General Hospital statement. “We hope this transplant method will provide a lifeline to the millions of patients around the world who suffer from kidney failure.”
However, this is not technically the first pig kidney transplant. The surgery has been performed five times in the past, with all patients declared brain dead and on life support. The most recent of these was conducted in July 2023 by Robert Montgomery and colleagues at NYU Langone Health. The kidney has been functioning 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 16. The surgery reportedly lasted four hours, and the kidneys soon began producing urine and the waste product creatinine. New York Times. Slimane was also able to stop dialysis, which was further evidence that the kidneys were functioning properly.
Where do pig kidneys come from?
The organ was provided by eGenesis Pharmaceuticals, which 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 likelihood of transplant rejection, when the immune system attacks the organ and causes it to fail. Slimane was also treated with a cocktail of immunosuppressive drugs to further reduce this risk. So far, Slimane has shown no signs of rejection and is able to walk on his own. His doctors hope to discharge him soon.
What do we know about the recipient?
Slimane suffers from type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease. He received a human kidney from a donor in December 2018. However, after about five years, the organ showed signs of failure. He began receiving dialysis in May last year but developed complications that required him to visit the hospital every two weeks. This had a serious impact on his quality of life while he waited for his second transplant.
more than There are 100,000 people in the United States Seventeen people die every day while waiting for organ transplants. Due to a lack of other treatment options, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an experimental transplant for Slayman.
“I saw this as a way not only to help me, but also to give hope to the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” Slayman said in a statement.
Are there xenotransplant surgeries involving other organs?
Only two other people have undergone xenotransplantation, and both received genetically modified pig hearts. The first, David Bennett, died two months later, possibly from complications caused by porcine cytomegalovirus. So the scientists genetically inactivated this and similar viruses in the pigs from which Sleiman’s kidneys were derived.
The second recipient, Lawrence Faucette, died of transplant rejection six weeks later.
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