A Boston hospital said on Thursday that its doctors placed a modified pig kidney into a human patient — the first time such a thing has been done.
If the process is successful in the end, it could help thousands of kidney failure patients waiting for a transplant. The doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital stated that the patient, Richard ‘Rick’ Slayman, is recovering well and is expected to leave the hospital soon.
The surgeons put a genetically altered pig kidney into Slayman on March 16 in a four-hour procedure, with the hospital noting that the new kidney was modified to remove harmful pig genes and add in some human genes.
Slayman, who has Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, received a kidney transplant from a deceased donor in 2018. He was on dialysis for eight years before that procedure, which helps the body remove fluids and waste when the kidneys are not able to.
However, the transplanted kidney started to fail and Slayman resumed dialysis in May 2023. His nephrologist recommended that he get a pig kidney transplant, which was approved in February by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Expanded Access Protocol allowing a patient to receive experimental treatment when there are no comparable treatment options.
There are more than 100,000 people in the U.S. waiting for an organ transplant, according to data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. The network reported about 17 people dying each day while waiting for an organ.
Scientists have been looking into xenotransplantation — transferring tissues or organs from one species to another — in recent years. There have been at least two pig heart transplants into living patients, but both of those men both died within months of getting the new heart.
Dr. Winfred Williams, Slayman’s nephrologist, said the process was a “true milestone in the field of transplantation.”
“It also represents a potential breakthrough in solving one of the more difficult problems in our field, which is unequal access for ethnic minority patients to the opportunity for kidney transplants due to the extreme shortage of donor organs and other system-based obstacles,” Williams stated.
