According to CCTV news, the Massachusetts General Hospital of the United States on the 21st released news that the hospital's medical experts have successfully carried out a special transplantation operation for an American male end-stage renal disease patient, the gene-edited pig kidney transplanted into his body. This is the first of its kind in the world. The man is recovering well after the operation and is expected to be discharged soon.
According to reports, specialists at the hospital's transplant centre carried out the four-hour operation on the 16th.
The patient who received the pig kidney transplant is Richard Slayman, 62.
Slayman has suffered from type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure for many years and had been on long-term dialysis.
He underwent a kidney transplant at the hospital in December 2018, but had to return to dialysis in May 2023 after his transplanted kidney showed signs of failure a few years later.
Sleiman later developed complications related to vascular access, and his doctors recommended a porcine kidney transplant.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the transplant based on "compassionate use" rules.
The hospital said the pig kidney used in the transplant underwent 69 genome edits, including "knocking out" genes that cause rejection in humans and adding some human genes to improve compatibility between the animal organ and the human body.
In addition, the team inactivated retroviral genes in the pigs to prevent associated viruses from affecting the transplant recipients. The hospital's medical experts said they hope this transplant option will bring hope to millions of kidney failure patients worldwide.
According to Caixin, patient Sleiman said, "I see this (transplanting pig kidneys) not only as a way to help myself, but also as a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need transplanted organs to survive."
Dr Tatsuo Kawai, director of the Clinical Transplantation Centre in Legorreta and the surgeon who performed the procedure, claimed that the transplanted pig kidney is almost exactly the same size compared to a human kidney.
Kawai told a press conference that when they transplanted the pig kidney in, it immediately began to resume functioning and produce urine, and everyone in the operating theatre erupted in applause. "It really is the most beautiful kidney I've ever seen."
Kawai added: "The success of this transplant is the result of decades of work by thousands of scientists and doctors. We are honoured to have played a major role in this milestone event. We are hopeful that this transplant will provide a lifeline for millions of kidney failure patients around the world."
According to Xinhua, more than 100,000 people in the US are waiting for organ transplants and an average of 17 people die every day while waiting for an organ, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a US-based non-profit organisation.
In response to the shortage of supply sources for human organs, researchers have long been working on xenograft organ transplants. Pigs are regarded as one of the best donor animals for xenotransplantation due to their organ structure, physiological function and size, which are similar to human organs, but there are still many difficulties and risks to be overcome through scientific research and clinical trials.
The United States had previously conducted two cases of living human pig heart transplantation, but two patients died within a few months after the operation.
In July last year, the United States team at New York University Langone Medical Centre had a case of pig kidney transplantation, the subject was a 57-year-old man who had been ruled brain dead.