They successfully transplant a pig kidney into a human for the first time

For the first time, a pig kidney has been successfully transplanted into a human and without triggering immediate rejection by the patient’s immune system, a potentially important advance that could help alleviate the shortage of human organs for transplantation.

The procedure, performed at NYU Langone Health Hospital in New York, used a pig whose genes had been altered to eliminate a molecule that causes almost immediate rejection in humans.

The recipient was a patient who was in a state of brain death with signs of kidney dysfunction, whose family consented to the experiment before life support was removed. For three days, the new kidney attached itself to your blood vessels and stayed outside your body. which allowed researchers to access it.

Results of transplanted kidney function tests “they seemed quite normal”said Dr. Robert Montgomery, a transplant surgeon and study director.

The kidney produced “the amount of urine you would expect” from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into nonhuman primates. The receptor’s abnormal creatinine level, an indicator of poor kidney function, returned to normal after transplant.

In the U.S, about 107,000 people are currently awaiting organ transplants, including more than 90,000 waiting for a kidney, according to the United Network for OrganSharing. Waiting times for a kidney are three to five years on average.

Researchers have been working for decades on the possibility of use animal organs for transplants, But they have been hampered on how to prevent immediate rejection by the human body.

The genetically altered pig, named GalSafe, was developed by the Revivicor unit of United Therapeutics Corp and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, for use as a food for people with a meat allergy.

Other researchers are considering if GalSafe pigs can be the source of everything, from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.

The New York University Kidney Transplant Experiment Should pave the way for trials in patients with end-stage renal failure, possibly in the next year or two, said Montgomery, who also received a heart transplant. Those trials could test the approach as a short-term solution for critically ill patients until a human kidney is available, or as a permanent graft.