For the first time, a pig kidney transplant into a deceased patient worked for more than a month.
- In a trial on a deceased patient, a transplanted pig kidney appeared to replace all the important tasks of the human kidney for an exceptional duration.
- The transplanted kidney lasted 32 days without apparent rejection.
- A second study demonstrated the advantage of pig kidneys in transplants.
This is a step forward which could potentially overcome the shortage of organs and transplants. A pig kidney has, in fact, been successfully transplanted into a human. Above all, it has been operating for more than a month, an exceptional duration which makes this xenotransplantation a world first.
The research team has not yet published the results of its ongoing work, but has communicated updated information.
Transplanted pig kidney: it replaces a human kidney for 32 days
The goal of xenotransplantation is to allow the transplantation of organs or cells of animal origin into humans.
The team from Langone Hospital in New York has doneJuly 14, 2023, a pig kidney transplant on a brain-dead 57-year-old man who had donates his body to science. According to the researchers, the organ from the animal has managed to replace all the important tasks of the human kidney for 32 days.
Indeed, according to Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute in New York and chairman of the department of surgery, there has been “no signs of rejection, kidney function and elimination of toxins are normal“. With the agreement of the family, the patient placed on a ventilator will be monitored for another month. The data collected will be analyzed to expand knowledge on xenotransplantation.
Xenografts are not a first for these New York scientists. They had already carried out this type of intervention several times, including the world’s first transplant of a pig kidney into a human in September 2021. However, until now, the trials had been carried out over short periods of time (less than one ten days).
Xenotransplantation: towards a reliable alternative to human transplantation?
Another research team also made an important discovery in the evolving field of xenotransplantation, according to a study published in the JAMA Surgery.
“In human-to-human transplants, kidneys from living donors tend to work better and faster than those from deceased donors.”explained Jayme Locke, director of the transplantation division of theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the United States, and author of this other essay.
Here, the pig kidneys behaved like transplants from living donors. “This means that these kidneys are excellent and will allow living people to function optimally in the not-so-distant future.“, concluded the scientist.
To be able to carry out this type of intervention in France, bioethics laws would need to be modified. Because, as we recall France Info, current texts prohibit any xenograft testing. In France, near 12,000 patients are waiting for a kidney donation for 3,000 to 4,000 transplants annually.
