Pig kidney transplanted into living person for first time
The world’s first successful transplant of a genetically edited pig kidney was conducted on a 62-year-old man last weekend at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Video above: Hospital leaders discuss historic pig kidney transplant
The hospital says the pig kidney with 69 genomic edits was successfully transplanted into the patient living with end-stage kidney disease.
The surgery on Saturday took approximately four hours. The hospital says the procedure marks a major milestone in the quest to provide more readily available organs to patients.
The hospital said the patient, identified as Richard Slayman, was recovering well at MGH and is expected to be discharged soon.
Slayman, who has been living with Type 2 diabetes and hypertension for many years, previously received a kidney transplant from a deceased human donor in December 2018 after being on dialysis seven years prior.
Video below: Doctor discusses motivations of patient who received groundbreaking transplant
The transplanted human kidney showed signs of failure approximately five years later, and Slayman resumed dialysis in May 2023. Since resuming dialysis, he encountered recurrent dialysis vascular access complications requiring visits to the hospital every two weeks for de-clotting and surgical revisions, significantly impacting his quality of life and a common problem among dialysis patients.
Slayman said his nephrologist and the Transplant Center team suggested a pig kidney transplant, carefully explaining the pros and cons of this procedure.
"I saw it not only as a way to help me but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive," Slayman said.
"He asked me, do you think it's going to hurt me? Do you think it's going to work? Do you have confidence in Dr. Reala and the team that's bringing this to the clinics? If you say that I have a good chance of thriving after this transplant and getting off dialysis, I want to give it a try again," said Dr. Winfred Williams, Associate Chair of MGH Nephrology Division. "He was completely exhausted at the failures that he was experiencing in dialysis. The other thing he said, I'm hoping that it can do some good for me. And I knew that if it did work, it would restore his quality of life. But he also said, I can also do good for others coming behind me."
The latest history-making kidney transplant comes some 70 years after Mass General Brigham performed the world’s first successful human kidney organ transplant in 1954.
"The success of this transplant is the culmination of efforts by thousands of scientists and physicians over several decades," Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, director of the Legorreta Center for Clinical Transplant Tolerance, said. "Our hope is that this transplant approach will offer a lifeline to millions of patients worldwide who are suffering from kidney failure."
The pig kidney was provided by eGenesis of Cambridge, Massachusetts, from a pig donor that was genetically edited using technology to remove harmful pig genes and add certain human genes to improve its compatibility with humans.
The hospital said scientists also deactivated porcine endogenous retroviruses in the pig donor to eliminate any risk of infection in humans.
The successful procedure in a living recipient is a historic milestone in the emerging field of xenotransplantation – the transplantation of organs or tissues from one species to another – as a potential solution to the worldwide organ shortage.
The procedure was performed under a single FDA Expanded Access Protocol – known as compassionate use – granted to a single patient or group of patients with serious, life-threatening illnesses or conditions to gain access to experimental treatments or trials when no comparable treatment options or therapies exist.
