A 62-year-old man with end-stage renal disease has become the first person to receive a new kidney from a genetically modified pig, doctors at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital announced Thursday.
The hospital said in a statement that the four-hour surgery on March 16 “marked an important milestone in efforts to provide patients with more accessible organs.”
The hospital said the patient, Richard Sleiman, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, is recovering well and is expected to be discharged soon.
Dr. Jim Kim, director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at the University of Southern California Transplant Institute in Los Angeles, said experts are very interested in the long-term results of this breakthrough animal-to-human transplant.
Slimane received a human kidney transplant at the same hospital in 2018 after seven years of dialysis, but five years later his organ failed and he returned to dialysis.
The kidney, provided by eGenesis of Cambridge, Mass., comes from a pig that has been genetically edited to remove genes harmful to human recipients and add certain human genes to improve compatibility. The company also inactivates viruses inherent in pigs that have the potential to infect humans.
Researchers reported in the journal Nature in October that kidneys from similarly edited pigs raised at eGenesis were successfully transplanted into monkeys, which lived an average of 176 days, with one case surviving for more than two years.
Drugs used to help prevent patients’ immune systems from rejecting pig organs include an experimental antibody called tegoprubart developed by Eledon Pharmaceuticals.
The surgery marks an advance in xenotransplantation, the transplantation of organs or tissue from one species to another, said Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, who was not involved in the case.
The field is “working hard to become an alternative organ source for hundreds of thousands of patients with kidney failure,” he said in an email.
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, more than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant, with kidneys in greatest need.
NYU surgeons have previously transplanted pig kidneys into brain-dead humans.
Montgomery said transplant centers are taking different approaches when it comes to gene editing and drug treatments, adding, “Another big step will be for the FDA to authorize clinical trials so we can better understand what works best for the patients on our waiting list.” .”
A research team at the University of Maryland transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a 57-year-old man with end-stage heart disease in January 2022, but he died two months later.
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