First kidney transplant from pig to human opens door on big possibilities—and big questions
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In September, surgeons at New York University Langone Health medical center carried out a two-hour operation in which they transplanted a kidney from a genetically altered pig into a human. On Thursday, they provided the first information from this transplantFirst kidney transplant from pig to human opens door on big possibilities—and big questions
In September, surgeons at New York University Langone Health medical center carried out a two-hour operation in which they transplanted a kidney from a genetically altered pig into a human. On Thursday, they provided the first information from this transplant, which they called “a major step forward in potentially utilizing an alternative supply of organs for people facing life-threatening disease.” This kind of transplant from a source that isn’t human, which is known as a xenotransplantation, offers the possibility to greatly expand the availability of much-needed kidneys as well as other organs that are even more difficult to obtain. While humans can give away one of their kidneys and survive, the same can’t be said of the heart, liver, or other organs that don’t come in handy pairs. Even so, the actual statics can be surprising. According to the Health Resources and Service Administration, there are over 106,000 Americans currently waiting on an organ to become available for transplant—90,000 of whom are looking for a kidney. Only about 20,000 kidneys become available each year. As a result, 17 people die each day when an organ fails to become available in time. Most of them die from the effects of prolonged kidney failure. In 2020, 39,000 transplant operations were carried out, but that number could expand greatly—well beyond the current waiting list—if there were a ready source of organs that didn’t make transplants a last, desperate measure. For years, experiments with xenotransplantation—as well as efforts to use a form of 3D printing to create custom replacement organs—have suggested that a new era of transplantation was around the corner, but until September actual experiments had been limited to transplants to primates, not humans. What happened at Langone in September signals that this era and the decisions it requires are drawing very near. Read more