Doctors in the United States have performed a rare pig-to-human kidney transplant on a sexagenarian man.
First pig-to-human kidney transplant
Richard Slayman of Weymouth, Massachusetts, who was suffering from end-stage renal disease, has become the first human to receive a new kidney from a genetically modified pig, doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced on Thursday. He is recovering well and expected to be discharged soon, the hospital said in a statement.
The 4-hour surgery, performed on March 16, “marks a major milestone in the quest to provide more readily available organs to patients,” the hospital said in a statement.
He is recovering well and expected to be discharged soon, the statement added.
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The 62-year-old had received a transplant of a human kidney at the same hospital in 2018 after seven years on dialysis, but the organ failed after five years and he had resumed dialysis treatments.
The kidney was provided by eGenesis of Cambridge, Massachusetts, from a pig that had been genetically edited to remove genes that could be harmful to a human recipient and add certain human genes to improve compatibility, Reuters reported.
The company also inactivated certain viruses inherent to pigs that have the potential to infect humans.
It is big step in the field of xenotransplantation – the transplanting of organs or tissues from one species to another.
NEW: The world’s first successful #transplant of a genetically edited pig kidney was conducted on a Weymouth man last weekend at #Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. We spoke to some of the doctors about the groundbreaking procedure https://t.co/54FqNknb0l pic.twitter.com/EfN9lCsQ2M
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) March 21, 2024
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. await an organ for transplant, with kidneys in the greatest demand.
In January 2022, a team from University of Maryland transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a 57-year-old man with terminal heart disease, but he died two months later.