Pig kidney transplant patient Rik Suleiman goes home after groundbreaking surgery

The hospital said in a statement Wednesday: Confirmed Suleiman has been released from the hospital and is said to be “recovering well.” The facility includes credited Successful surgery requires “years of research, preclinical research, and collaboration.”

“Today, this moment when I can leave the hospital in the best health I have experienced in a long time, is the moment I have wanted to come for years,” Suleiman said. stated in the discharge statement He was released from the hospital. “Now it’s real and it’s one of the happiest moments of my life.”

Suleiman, who works for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, has been battling kidney disease for more than 10 years. He underwent dialysis and survived a human kidney transplant in 2018, but then became seriously ill and was close to despair, The Washington Post reported last month.

Doctors had to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration to plan the breakthrough surgery, which approved it under “compassionate use” rules. Approval is given if the patient has the following symptoms: “Serious or immediately life-threatening illness or condition” According to the FDA, there are no alternative treatments.

Human and pig kidneys are about the same size. To reduce the risk of Suleiman’s immune system attacking the transplanted pig’s organs, researchers had to edit the pig’s genetic information 69 times.

For the more than 550,000 kidney patients receiving dialysis in the United States, Suleiman’s story may offer a glimmer of hope. Leonardo V. Riera, medical director for kidney transplants at Massachusetts General Services Administration, said he hopes this scientific advancement will one day make dialysis obsolete.

Suleiman said in a statement that he is “excited to be able to spend time again” with his loved ones “free from the burden of dialysis, which has affected my quality of life for many years.”

As of February 2023, 88,658 people are on the kidney transplant waiting list in the United States. according to National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

The institute notes that white people are more likely to receive a transplant within five years than blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Experts hope medical advances, including the use of pig kidneys, will help address this inequity and address the gap between people waiting for transplants and the lack of available human organs. are doing.

Recent advances in this field are believed to be due to new technologies. These include the gene-editing tool CRISPR, recognized for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020, which can modify organs to make them less foreign to recipients and reduce the chance of rejection. I can do it.

Some scientists have transplanted animal organs into donated cadavers as part of their research into xenotransplantation, the process of transplanting organs from one species into another. They hope their findings will one day result in the FDA allowing formal xenograft studies. Associated Press reported.

In recent years, two patients have died after receiving organ transplants from animals.

The world’s first patient to receive a genetically modified pig heart in 2022 died about two months after surgery, according to officials at the University of Maryland Medical Center. The patient, David Bennett Sr., had multiple complications, and traces of a virus that infects pigs were also found in his new heart, the Post reported.

In 2023, another patient died six weeks after receiving a pig heart transplant. Before the surgery, Lawrence Fawcett was dying of heart failure and was deemed ineligible for a human heart transplant due to his advanced condition. The pig transplant was his last chance.

Fawcett initially showed “significant” signs of progress, but over the next few weeks his new heart started showing “signs of rejection,” University of Maryland School of Medicine officials said. Said.