Pig-to-human kidney transplant success may offer hope

STORY: "It was truly the most beautiful kidney I have ever seen."

Transplant surgeon Dr Tatsuo Kawai and his team are hailing what they call a major breakthrough, after what they say is the first ever successful transplant of a pig kidney into a live human patient.

Kawai described the moment after the kidney was hooked up to the 62-year-old man who had end-stage renal disease.

"Upon restoration of blood flow into the kidneys, the kidney pinked up immediately and started to make urine. When we saw the first urine output everyone in the operating room burst in applause."

The four-hour surgery was performed on March 16 at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The hospital said the patient is recovering well and set to be discharged soon.

He had received a human kidney transplant at the same hospital in 2018, after seven years on dialysis.

But the organ failed five years later, putting him back on dialysis.

His new kidney was provided by biotech company eGenesis, from a pig with about the same sized organs that had been genetically edited to remove genes that could be harmful to a human recipient.

Certain human genes were also added to improve compatibility.

And some viruses inherent to pigs with the potential to infect humans were inactivated.

The renal experts are hoping the transplanted organ will last at least two years.

EGenesis CEO Dr. Mike Curtis sees this surgery as a milestone that could turn hope into reality for the queue of some 90,000 Americans waiting for donor kidneys.

"Many of those patients will spend their final days on dialysis. That's just the patients on the transplant waiting list. If we look more broadly at the patients with kidney failure on dialysis, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of patients who could benefit from a kidney transplant. And the reality is, with our current cadaveric kidney donation system, it's just insufficient to fill that need."

Researchers have been working for decades on the possibility of using animal organs for transplants, known as xenotransplantation, but rejection by the human body has been a stumbling block.

In 2021, NYU surgeons had successfully transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a braindead patient, whose family consented to the experiment shortly before life support was due to be switched off.