In October 2021, a team of New York researchers successfully transplanted the kidney from a pig to a human, without the recipient’s body rejecting the organ.
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“This is a major surgical breakthrough and brings us one step closer to a solution to the organ shortage”, said Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the transplant. For the first time, American surgeons have successfully transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig into a human patient, the University of Maryland School of Medicine announced on Monday (January 10). The operation was carried out on Friday and showed that an animal heart could continue to function inside a human without immediate rejection, the institution said in a statement.
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David Bennett, 57, who received the porcine heart, was declared ineligible for a human transplant. It is now closely monitored by doctors to make sure the new organ is functioning properly. “It was either death or this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s pretty hit and miss, but it was my last option.”the Maryland resident said a day before his operation, according to the medical school. “I can’t wait to get out of bed once I’m well.”, he continued, who spent the last few months bedridden and plugged into a machine that kept him alive.
The pig the heart comes from has been genetically modified to no longer produce a type of sugar that is normally present in all pig cells and that causes immediate rejection of the organ. This genetic modification was carried out by the company Revivicor, who also provided a pig kidney that surgeons had successfully connected to the blood vessels of a brain-dead patient in New York in October.