“His blood pressure and vital signs are very stable,” he said. “He appears to be on the path to an almost complete recovery.”
Still, doctors are working around the clock taking samples of Suleiman’s blood, looking for signs of the dangerous virus that is believed to have killed the man who received the first genetically engineered heart from a pig in 2022.
The question still remains how long the kidneys will last.
“It is important to know whether the xenograft will ultimately be a bridge, meaning it will survive for a short period of time until a human allograft is found, or whether it will be what we call a destination, meaning it will survive. It’s going to be very interesting because this person will live the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Jamie Locke, a transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hersink School of Medicine.
Still, “this is a game-changer,” Locke said.
Just once for now
Xenotransplantation is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Although touted as a potential solution to the global organ shortage, the procedure could be years away from widespread use as more data is needed.
“What we really want to do is participate in the first clinical trial, where we have multiple patients receiving xenotransplants and several sites participating, to really test our hypothesis and see how safe this is. “We can see how effective it is,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of New York University’s Langone Transplant Institute.
Suleiman’s transplant was done under the FDA’s Compassionate Use Program, which allows patients with serious, life-threatening conditions to receive experimental treatments when there are no other options available.
“This is a one-time transplant,” says Karen Maschke, a researcher at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute. He researches ethical, regulatory, and policy issues surrounding the use of new biomedical technologies.
Although Suleiman was unique in being selected for a pig kidney transplant, his condition is far from unique: Approximately 800,000 people in the United States have undergone transplants. have renal failure Dialysis is required, which is often a lengthy process for patients.
Suleiman received a kidney transplant from a deceased human donor in 2018 after undergoing dialysis for seven years. However, last year the transplant showed signs of failure and her dialysis was restarted.
Williams said putting Suleiman back on the waiting list for a new kidney was an option, but that would require a six- to seven-year wait, during which time it was unclear whether Suleiman would survive. Williams had doubts.
“He was in a dire straits,” Williams said.
Dr. Leonardo Riera, chief kidney transplant physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, suggested a pig kidney transplant as another option, Williams said, and Suleiman agreed, adding that he was frustrated with dialysis.
“Our hope is that dialysis will become obsolete,” Riera said at a press conference Thursday.
