A pig kidney was successfully linked to a human patient in New York City, and the pinkish organ generally functioned for 54 hours. While similar surgeries have been performed in nonhuman primates, this is the first time a pig kidney has been successfully transplanted into a human body.
The technique, unveiled at a news conference on October 21, is a step toward substantially increasing the availability of life-saving organs. Millions of people wait for donated organs all across the world, but many of them never arrive.
While the process has yet to be peer reviewed or published in a publication, Megan Sykes, an immunologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, believes "it's a huge step." But, she argues, there are still many more steps to be accomplished before humans in need of a kidney may readily obtain one from a pig.
Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions concerning the milestone.
What makes you think of pigs?
"With human organs, we'll never be able to solve the organ scarcity problem," says John Scandling, a nephrologist at Stanford University who wasn't involved in the study. "There's a limit to how many viable deceased donor organs there are," and there aren't enough living donors.
Over 100,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list in the United States, with over 90% of them needing a kidney. In 2019, however, fewer than 40,000 transplants were performed. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, about 17 individuals die daily while waiting for an organ transplant.
Using animal organs, a process known as xenotransplantation, scientists have long sought to remedy this scarcity. Pigs have emerged as the research's primary focus since their organs are physically similar to human organs and can be bred in a highly regulated environment.
However, just transplanting an organ from another species into a person triggers the immune system's fight-or-flight response in response to the presence of a vast, foreign object. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists attempted similar experiments on nonhuman primates and discovered that the transplanted organ quickly became black. "In those days, you could watch the organs fail because there was an immediate reaction," Scandling explains. The early reaction, known as hyperacute rejection, is the first significant roadblock to a successful xenotransplant.
Some of these obstacles have been solved via genetic engineering in recent decades. According to scientists, antibodies that identify a specific sugar molecule called alpha-gal that dots pig blood arteries are responsible for the severe immune response seen following a pig xenotransplant. It's the same sugar molecule that causes red meat allergies in certain people.
Scientists developed strategies to disable the pig gene responsible for this sugar in the early 2000s. Following research, kidneys and other organs from pigs lacking this gene were successfully transplanted into nonhuman primates, including baboons. But, until recently, there had never been a successful test of this type of transplant in humans.
What were the researchers' findings?
Performing the first-of-its-kind procedure on a living individual poses a slew of ethical concerns. According to Robert Montgomery, a surgeon at NYU Langone Health in New York City who headed the surgical team, the family of a lady who was brain-dead but kept alive on a ventilator consented to the operation in late September. After the procedure, she was taken off life support.
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