From the Website of CNN NEWS
links: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/20/health/human-pig-kidney-transplant-scli-intl-scn/index.html
US surgeons successfully test pig kidney transplant in human patient
A surgical team examines the pig kidney.
For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant.
The
procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved the use
of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer
contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection.
For
three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and
maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it.
Test
results of the transplanted kidney's function "looked pretty normal,"
said transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the study.
The
kidney made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a
transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the
vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are
transplanted into non-human primates.
The
recipient's abnormal creatinine level -- an indicator of poor kidney
function -- returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said.
In
the United States, nearly 107,000 people are presently waiting for
organ transplants, including more than 90,000 awaiting a kidney,
according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Wait times for a
kidney average three to five years.
Researchers
have been working for decades on the possibility of using animal organs
for transplants, but have been stymied over how to prevent immediate
rejection by the human body.
Montgomery's
team theorized that knocking out the pig gene for a carbohydrate that
triggers rejection -- a sugar molecule, or glycan, called alpha-gal --
would prevent the problem.
The
genetically altered pig, dubbed GalSafe, was developed by United
Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit. It was approved by the US Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2020, for use as food for people
with a meat allergy and as a potential source of human therapeutics.
Medical products developed from the pigs would still require specific FDA approval before being used in humans, the agency said.
Other
researchers are considering whether GalSafe pigs can be sources of
everything from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.
The
NYU kidney transplant experiment should pave the way for trials in
patients with end-stage kidney failure, possibly in the next year or
two, said Montgomery, himself a heart transplant recipient. Those trials
might test the approach as a short-term solution for critically ill
patients until a human kidney becomes available, or as a permanent
graft.
The
current experiment involved a single transplant, and the kidney was
left in place for only three days, so any future trials are likely to
uncover new barriers that will need to be overcome, Montgomery said.
Participants would probably be patients with low odds of receiving a
human kidney and a poor prognosis on dialysis.
"For
a lot of those people, the mortality rate is as high as it is for some
cancers, and we don't think twice about using new drugs and doing new
trials (in cancer patients) when it might give them a couple of months
more of life," Montgomery said.
The
researchers worked with medical ethicists, legal and religious experts
to vet the concept before asking a family for temporary access to a
brain-dead patient, Montgomery said.
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