Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital announced Thursday that they have transplanted a genetically engineered pig kidney into a human suffering from kidney disease. This is the world’s first attempt.
Doctors said the patient, 62-year-old Weymouth resident Richard Suleiman, is recovering well and is expected to be discharged from hospital soon.
This surgery is a milestone in the field, known as. xenograft This is when organs of one species are transplanted into another species and is seen as a potential solution to the global human organ shortage for patients in need of transplants.
Nationally, Over 100,000 people They are on waiting lists for organ transplants, and only some patients who can benefit from a new kidney actually receive an organ transplant. Some patients tolerate long-term dialysis treatment. While undergoing dialysis, patients can become too ill to receive a transplant.
“Imagine a different story in which young, healthy kidneys are readily available for transplantation into patients with advanced kidney disease,” said Dr. Leonardo Riera, medical director of kidney transplantation at Massachusetts General. Today, we are offering a glimmer of hope to many of these patients. ”
- A member of a surgical team holds a pig’s kidney during a groundbreaking surgery. (Courtesy of Massachusetts General Hospital)
What seemed like science fiction just a few years ago may one day become an everyday treatment option for people whose kidneys have stopped functioning.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Riera became emotional about the years of work that led to the complex four-hour surgery on March 16.
This latest advancement is based on decades of research. The world’s first kidney transplant was performed 70 years ago at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a sister facility of Massachusetts General Hospital.
Research on pig organs has progressed rapidly in recent years. Surgeons at New York University Langone last year studied the feasibility of transplanting pig kidneys into humans declared brain dead. Other medical teams are working on transplanting pig hearts and livers into humans.
“The most beautiful kidney”
Mas General worked with a Cambridge-based company called eGenesis, which raises Yucatan miniature pigs on farms in the Midwest. One of the pigs was taken to Massachusetts, where its kidney was removed, placed in a box covered in ice, and sent by ambulance to the hospital.
The pig’s kidney started functioning immediately after being transplanted. “Everyone in the operating room burst into applause,” said transplant surgeon Dr. Tatsuo Kawai.
“The kidneys immediately turned pink and started producing urine,” Kawai said. “It really was the most beautiful kidney I’ve ever seen.”
Kawai said he expects the organ to function for at least two years, based on data from experiments in which pig organs were transplanted into monkeys.
- Pig kidney genetically modified during surgery. (Courtesy of Massachusetts General Hospital)
Scientists used CRISPR gene editing technology to make 69 changes to pig kidneys, including removing harmful pig genes and adding human genes, edits that prevent swine virus infection. I did it.
“This is very similar to the human kidney,” eGenesis CEO Mike Curtis told WBUR. “All organs are sized appropriately for a human recipient. Physiology is relatively compatible with humans and can be edited.”
The company is cloning pigs and plans to eventually breed pigs, Curtis said.
Some experts are reluctant to use pigs in this way.
“I think we need to be very, very careful,” L. Sid M. Johnson, a bioethicist at New York State Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, told NPR. “We’re very concerned about treatments that have very little evidence.”
Black patients disproportionately face kidney failure
Suleiman, a transplant patient from Massachusetts, has lived with diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease for many years. He was on dialysis for seven years and then received a kidney transplant from a deceased human donor in 2018. However, the organ eventually stopped working and he returned to dialysis. But nephrologist Dr. Winfred Williams said dialysis treatment was complicated by clotting in the blood vessels.
Suleiman’s illness became unbearable.
“At one point he told me he didn’t think he could go on any longer,” Williams recalled. “He literally said, ‘I can’t keep going like this.’ I don’t want to keep going like this.”
So Williams said he started thinking about “special options” that might help.
Suleiman is black.Like many health conditions, black people also experience Disproportionally high rates of renal failuredue to barriers such as lack of access to care and systemic racism.
Williams said xenotransplantation could help address these disparities.
“This is a real milestone in the sense that it could be a breakthrough in solving one of the most intractable problems in our field: unequal access to minority patients. Stone,” Williams said. “The abundant supply of organs created by this technological advance may go a long way toward ultimately achieving health equity.”
Suleiman, head of the state transportation department, said in a statement through Mass General that he chose the experimental surgery after doctors carefully explained the pros and cons.
“I saw it as a way not only to help me, but also to give hope to the thousands of people who need transplants to survive,” Suleiman said.
