Surgeons of Massachusetts General Hospital donated a genetically modified pig kidney to a 67-year-old Up-to-date Hampshire man after a period of withering kidney function, the hospital confirmed to WIRED in a statement. The organ functioned for almost nine months, longer than previous pig organ transplants, before it was removed on October 23.
Tim Andrews received a pig kidney on January 25 after dialysis lasting over two years due to end-stage renal disease. His sporadic blood type meant the wait for a kidney from a human donor was much longer than most patients, who already wait an average of three to five years for a kidney.
The shortage of human donors has forced scientists to look for animals as a potential source of organs. Kidneys are most sought after, including: almost 90,000 people are waiting to receive it in the US itself. Due to organ shortages, only 28,000 kidney transplants will be performed in the U.S. in 2024.
Pig organs are being explored as an option, although genetic differences between pigs and humans mean that if transplanted into a human, the organs would be quickly rejected. So scientists have turned to gene editing to make pig organs more compatible with the human body, and have so far performed several experimental transplants.
Andrews was the fourth person in the world to receive a kidney from a genetically modified donor pig. The first, Richard Slayman, whose surgery was also performed at Massachusetts General, died in May 2024, almost two months after the transplant. The second person, Lisa Pisano, underwent a combined porcine kidney transplant and heart pump surgery at NYU Langone Health, but in May 2024, her kidney was removed after less than two months due to failure. Pisano later died. Towana Looney became the third recipient of a pig kidney, again at NYU Langone, and lived with the organ for more than four months before surgeons removed it in April this year due to organ rejection.
Since Andrews’ surgery, a patient in China was given a modified pig kidney, and surgeons at Massachusetts General transplanted one into another patient, 54-year-old Bill Stewart, bringing the total number of people who have received pig kidneys to six.
Before the pig kidney transplant, two patients received genetically modified pig hearts at the University of Maryland in 2022 and 2023, but never became robust enough to leave the hospital. They both died within two months of the procedures.