Pig kidneys live healthy in human body

On August 16, NYU Langone Health (USA) announced a trial of transplanting a kidney from a gene-edited pig into the body of a brain-dead patient. For the past month, this organ has been functioning well.

“It seems like the pig kidney is working better than a human kidney,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone’s transplant institute, told the AP while watching the organ excrete urine.

Surgery brings world closer to human-animal transplants

The possibility that “pig kidneys could one day alleviate the critical organ transplant shortage” convinced the family of Maurice “Mo” Miller to donate his body for the experiment. The man died suddenly at the age of 57 from brain cancer.

Maurice’s sister, Mary, said her brother loved helping others. “I think this is what my brother would have wanted. He would be in the medical books and live forever,” Mary said.

The team had to plan their time carefully, ABC reported. Early that morning, the two scientists flew hundreds of miles to a genetically modified pig facility in Virginia. In New York, Dr. Montgomery removed both kidneys from Maurice’s body. Doctors replaced one with a pig kidney, and the other was stored for comparison at the end of the experiment.

Attempts to transplant animal organs into humans, known as xenotransplants, have failed for decades because the human immune system attacks foreign tissue. Scientists are now using genetically modified pigs with organs more compatible with humans.

Patient's family talks with Dr. Montgomery

Last year, surgeons at the University of Maryland implanted a genetically modified pig heart into a man who had no other options. He survived for just two months before the organ failed for unknown reasons.

This past week, the University of Alabama also announced another major success — a pig kidney functioned normally inside another donated body for seven days.

Kidneys do more than just produce urine; they perform a variety of other functions in the body. In the journal JAMA Surgery, Dr. Jayme Locke reported on tests that documented the performance of organs from genetically modified pigs. She said the week-long experiment demonstrated that the pig organs could “provide life-sustaining kidney function.”

In the United States, more than 100,000 patients are on the nation's transplant list and thousands die each year waiting for a replacement organ.

According to Vietnamnet