A kidney transplant is a fairly well-known procedure between two humans. However, the procedure at NYC’s NYU Langone Health was historic. Here’s everything you need to know about a successful organ transplant from a pig to a human.
Kidney transplant: From pig to human
Despite being a perfect match, an organ transplant is a very tricky procedure since it can lead to incompatibility and rejection. However, when an organ transplant is between two species (a xenograft) such as a pig and a human, it is tricky. This is because the pig’s gene contains a molecule that triggers an immediate rejection in humans.
However, the procedure at New York City’s NYU Langone Health is a different case. The doctors used a pig whose genes had alterations. Hence, it no longer contained the molecule which will lead to a rejection in humans. “The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off of life support,” stated the researchers.
The new kidney, attached to the patient’s blood vessels but maintained outside for three days. The transplant surgeons observed and studied it before concluding that it functioned normally.” The kidney made the amount of urine that you would expect from a transplanted human kidney. And there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery. Dr. Mongomery, the transplant surgeon leads the novelle study. “The recipient’s abnormal creatinine level. An indicator of poor kidney function – returned to normal after the transplant,” he added.
GalSafe: the first success of its kind
GalSafe, the genetically altered pig was developed by the Revivicor unit at the United Therapeutic Corp. It received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2020. However, “medical products developed from the pigs would still require specific FDA approval before being used in humans,” stated the agency. The success has researchers considering its use as a source for skin grafts to heart valves for humans.
The NYU transplant will pave the way for more trials in the next couple of years. Trials could help in making GalSafe transplant, a temporary solution for the critically ill or even a permanent graft. “For a lot of those people, the mortality rate is as high as it is for some cancers, and we don’t think twice about using new drugs and doing new trials when it might give them a couple of months more of life,” added Dr. Montgomery.