First pig kidney successfully tested in a human, doctors say functioning ‘pretty normal’

Surgeons in New York City successfully transplant a genetically engineered pig’s kidney to a deceased recipient without being rejected by the body.

A team of surgeons at NYU Langone Health in New York City has successfully attached a pig kidney to a human patient without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient’s immune system. If this proves to be successful, it could eventually help do away with the critical shortage of human organs and offer a glimmer of hope for a large number of people on waitlists for life-saving transplants.

Pigs have been the latest research focus to address the organ shortage, but one of the hurdles doctors face is the sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, which causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this transplant came from a gene-edited pig, which was genetically engineered to eliminate the sugar present in their cells to avoid an immune system attack.

The surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased patient to observe it for two days. Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at NYU Langone Health, said that the pig kidney had a regular function, and it didn’t have this immediate rejection that they were worried about.