Surgeons in the United States, for the first time, have successfully attached a kidney grown in a genetically altered pig to a human patient and found that the organ worked normally.
According to Reuters news agency, the procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City, involved the use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger an almost immediate rejection.
The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off life support.
For three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it.
Test results of the transplanted kidney’s function “looked pretty normal,” said transplant surgeon Dr Robert Montgomery, who led the study.
The kidney made “the amount of urine that you would expect” from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into non-human primates.
The recipient’s abnormal creatinine level, an indicator of poor kidney function returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said.
In the United States, nearly 107,000 people are currently waiting for organ transplants, including the more than 90,000 awaiting a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Stand-by times for a kidney average between three and five years.
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