Patient receives kidney from genetically engineered pig in medical breakthrough that could end dialysis
An ailing 62-year-old man with end-stage kidney disease has been given a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig in a first-of-its-kind procedure, doctors revealed Thursday.
Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston carried out the milestone kidney transplant last weekend.
The new kidney started producing urine soon after the four-hour surgery, according to doctors.
The patient, Richard “Rick” Slayma, is already walking around and will likely be discharged from the hospital soon, they added.
“The real hero today is the patient, Mr. Slayman, as the success of this pioneering surgery, once deemed unimaginable, would not have been possible without his courage and willingness to embark on a journey into uncharted medical territory,” said Joren C. Madsen, director of the hospital’s MGH Transplant Center.
“As the global medical community celebrates this monumental achievement, Mr. Slayman becomes a beacon of hope for countless individuals suffering from end-stage renal disease and opens a new frontier in organ transplantation.”
Slayma, who has been living with Type 2 diabetes for years, had previously received a kidney transplant from a human donor in December 2018 after being on dialysis for seven years.
The kidney started to fail, though, roughly five years later and Slayma had to return to dialysis again.
He raised his hand for the pig kidney transplant after experiencing ongoing dialysis complications that required him to be hospitalized every two weeks.
“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,” Slayma said in a statement.
The pig kidney — provided by the Massachusetts-based biotech company eGenesis — was engineered using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which removes harmful pig genes and adds some human ones to improve its compatibility.
Doctors are hailing Slayma’s transplant as a historic milestone in the emerging field of xenotransplantation — the implantation of an animal organ into a human.
If the transplant is a continued success, doctors said such procedures could prove to be a solution to a worldwide organ shortage.
More than 100,000 people across the US are on standby for an organ transplant — and 17 people die each day while waiting, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
The Boston transplant comes after NYU Langone Health surgeons transplanted a pig kidney into a brain-dead man last year.
The organ worked normally inside the man, Maurice “Mo” Miller, for at least two months.
