The medic team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Thursday announced the successful transplant of genetically modified, clinical-grade pig kidneys into a brain-dead human individual.
The patient was a 57-year-old brain-dead man whose kidneys were removed to make room for two pig kidneys. It took about 23 minutes before they began to function, creating urine for three days, until the end of their study.
“This game-changing moment in the history of medicine represents a paradigm shift and a major milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, which is arguably the best solution to the organ shortage crisis,” said Dr. Jayme Locke, director of UAB’s Incompatible Kidney Transplant Program, in a statement.
The first pig kidney was transplanted in a human by a team at New York University (NYU) Langone on September 25 2021, and involved a brain dead patient on a ventilator whose family had given permission for the proof of concept experiment.
That procedure involved attaching a kidney to blood vessels on the top of one of the patient’s legs, so that scientists could observe it and take biopsy samples.
Paige Porrett, director of vascularized composite allotransplantation and of Clinical and Translational Research at UAB’s Comprehensive Transplant Institute and lead author of the study says, in rare cases, poorly matched human organ transplants can trigger a phenomenon called hype acute rejection, in which the body begins aggressively attacking the new organ within hours or even minutes of surgery.
“It’s a different type of rejection. And it’s a fundamental barrier,”
