By Carla K. Johnson -
The Associated Press
Scientists at New York University were able to temporarily attach and work a pig kidney to the human body of a deceased woman.
A small breakthrough in decades-long research to one day use animal organs in transplants to save human lives.
Pigs have become a priority to address the shortage of human organs, but researchers face an obstacle: a type of sugar in porcine cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate rejection of the organ.
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In the successful transplant, a kidney from a genetically engineered animal was used to remove that sugar and prevent an attack from the immune system.
Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so that they could observe it for two days.
The kidney did what it was supposed to do - filter waste and produce urine - without causing rejection.
"It had an absolutely normal function," said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at New York University's Langone Health (UNY) medical center.
"There was not this immediate rejection that we previously feared," he added.
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This research is "an important step," stated Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, and was not part of the research.
It will reassure patients, researchers and regulatory authorities "that we are moving in the right direction."
The dream of animal-to-human transplants - or xenotransplantation - dates back to the 17th century with the failed attempts to use animal blood in transfusions.
In the 20th century, surgeons attempted to transplant baboon organs into humans.
The most famous case was that of the girl The girl 'Baby Fae', which she received in 1984, who lived 21 days with the heart of a baboon.
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Without any long-term efficacy and too much public outrage, scientists turned from primates to pigs, manipulating their genes to bridge the gap between species.
In this September 2021 photo, provided by New York University's Langone Health Medical Center, a surgical team examines a pig kidney attached to the body of a deceased donor.Joe Carrotta / AP
Pigs have advantages over monkeys and apes.
They are raised for food, so using them to harness your organs raises fewer ethical concerns.
Pigs have large litters, short gestation periods, and organs comparable to those of humans.
Pig heart valves have also been used effectively for decades in humans.
The anticoagulant heparin is obtained from the intestines of this animal.
Porcine skin grafts are used in burns and Chinese surgeons have used pig corneas to restore sight.
In the case of the UNY, the researchers kept the body of a deceased woman operating on an artificial respirator after the family authorized the experiment.
The woman wanted to donate her organs, but they were not suitable for a traditional donation.
The family thought "there was a chance that something good would come out of this," Montgomery said.
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Montgomery received a transplant three years ago, a human heart from a donor with hepatitis C because he was willing to receive any organ.
"I was one of those people lying in an intensive care unit waiting without knowing if an organ would arrive in time," he recalled.
Various biotech companies seek to develop pig organs suitable for transplantation in order to reduce the shortage of human organs.
More than 90,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list to receive a kidney.
Every day 12 of them die while waiting.
The breakthrough is a triumph for Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, the company that manipulated the development of the pig and its cousins, a group of 100 animals raised under highly controlled conditions at a facility in Iowa.
These pigs lack a gene that produces alpha-gal, a sugar that causes an immediate attack on the human immune system.
In December, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the genetic alteration in Revivicor pigs and deemed them fit for human consumption and medical use.
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However, the FDA said developers need to provide more documentation before pig organs can be transplanted into living people.
"This is an important step in realizing the promise of xenotransplantation, which will save thousands of lives each year in the not too distant future," United Therapeutics CEO Martine Rothblatt said in a statement.
Experts say that tests in non-human primates and last month's experiment on a human body pave the way for the first experimental pig kidney or heart transplants in living people in the coming years.
Raising pigs to be organ donors isn't right for everyone, but acceptance could increase if animal welfare concerns are addressed, said Karen Maschke, a research fellow at the Hastings Center, who contributes to develop ethics and policy recommendations for early clinical trials with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
"The other question will be: should we do this just because we can?" Meschke wondered.
