Pig kidney transplant
A woman in the USA underwent a transplant procedure to obtain a new kidney from a genetically modified pig. He is the third living person to receive a pig kidney. Compatibility was one in a million.
Let’s get Looneya 53-year-old American woman whose only kidney no longer worked, became the third living person in the world to benefit from the pig kidney transplant.
The operation took place at the end of November at NYU Langone Hospital, in New York, a pioneer in the area. And now it is confirmed: it went really well.
“I was lucky to have received this gift, a second chance at life”, he confided alongside the medical team during a press conference.
Looney donated one of his kidneys to his mother in 1999 and lived eight years on dialysis after a pregnancy complication has damaged your remaining kidney.
This North American woman who lives in Alabama, in the south of the USA, was waiting for a transplant since 2017 and was unable to find a compatible donor.
As her medical condition worsened, she was allowed to receive a genetically modified pig kidney.
“I’m full of energy, I have an appetite”, he assured on Tuesday, continuing with a laugh: “and of course I can go to the bathroom”.
This type of transplant called xenograftbetween animal and human, feeds the hope to respond to the chronic shortage of organ donations in a country where more than 100,000 patients are on the waiting list, including more than 90,000 for a kidney.
Three weeks after the operation, the patient had “normal kidney conditions”, the surgeon said. Robert Montgomerymember of the medical team.
NYU Langone Hospital in New York had already transplanted pig kidneys into two other living patients, Rick Slayman is Lisa Pisanoearlier this year. But the latter, seriously ill, died a few weeks later.
Special surgical process
Towana Looney, whose general health is better than that of these patients, benefited from a slightly different kidneyexplicou Montgomery.
Unlike the organs received by the first two people that had only one genetic modification, the kidney that was transplanted into Looney has dez.
These modifications to the pig’s DNA are intended to improve the biological compatibility between the animal and the human being and to prevent the organ from being immediately rejected by the recipient’s body.
In these previous operations, doctors also transplanted the pig’s thymus, a gland that plays an important role in the immune response. That wasn’t the case with Looney.
Furthermore, a new combination of drugs was tested in this last transplant.
The medical team announced on Tuesday that the company Revivicor, supplier of the transplanted kidney, will ask the North American authorities for authorization to start, from next year, clinical trials on the two types of kidneys developed.
From science fiction to reality
Long confined to science fiction, xenotransplantation has recently benefited from advances in gene editing and controlling the immune system’s response, limiting the risks of rejection.
“The next goal is to extend the lifespan of these kidneysincluding providing them to healthier people, with a better chance of living longer”, pointed out Montgomery.
Several other such transplants have been performed by his team in recent years, including one in a brain-dead patient in September 2021. The organ worked well for a few days.
Another American scientific team carried out the world’s first transplant in 2022. But the man, operated on by surgeons at the University of Maryland, died two months after the operation.
