I was reading through some headlines online and saw this article, so I decided to share if anyone must have possibly seen or heard about it.
Pig kidneys successfully transplanted into humans.
Trial in US offers hope for solving organ shortage.
Organs grown in animals for use in humans are beginning to build up a record of clinical success after decades of unfulfilled promise, offering hope for the future of transplants. Five patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in the US have undergone successful transplants with animal organs a process known as xenotransplantation since March 2024 after the pig kidneys they received were genetically engineered to avoid rejection, US biotech company eGenesis said.
In three of them, the porcine organs worked for more than eight months without rejection or the need for dialysis.
The organ shortage is the greatest crisis we have right now in transplantation,” said Leonardo Riella, director of kidney transplantation at Mass General, who led the eGenesis clinical trials. “It’s amazing to see the progress,” said Mike Curtis, chief executive of eGenesis. “Our goal is to make transplantation available to patients when they need it, without being constrained by the limited supply of human donor organs.”
The animal organs would initially be used “as a bridge to get patients off dialysis while they wait for a human donor kidney,” said Riella, adding that it could eventually be used “as a destination therapy in its own right” if the trials “establish long-term safety and durability”. The kidneys were grown in Yucatan miniature pigs whose organs are similar in size to their human counterparts.
They were genetically engineered to remove three pig proteins that are most likely to lead to immune rejection and add seven human genes to improve compatibility with the patient. In addition, the porcine DNA was manipulated to inactivate viruses that might infect the recipient. One patient, Tim Andrews, whose case was described in The Lancet journal on Thursday, lived with a pig kidney, which he received aged 66, for almost nine months without needing dialysis until the transplanted organ began to fail, though there were no signs of immune rejection. He then received a kidney from a deceased human donor.
Subsequent tests showed that living with the pig kidney had not made it harder for the human transplant to work successfully.
Source: 👇
https://www.ft.com/content/e9548ff5-3b59-4d69-be26-5882e2c4a716?syn-25a6b1a6=1
I thought this had been a thing for awhile. There was an episode of House with a pig transplant, I think.
Ohk thanks.
Wasn’t the first genetically edited pig kidney already transplanted into a living human in 2024? From what I understand, the really new part here is how much longer these kidneys are now lasting, and that one patient was able to use a pig kidney as a bridge until receiving a human kidney. That seems like the bigger breakthrough to me.