Photo:Andy Clayton-King/AP Photo
Andy Clayton-King/AP Photo
As the need for organ donation grows, researchers are looking for solutions.
Surgeons at NYU Langone Health announced that their experiment of transplanting a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a human body was successful for a short amount of time, according to theAssociated Press.
Doctors transplanted a single kidney from a genetically modified pig into a brain-dead man’s body, replacing both of his kidneys. The patient did not reject the organ and the kidneys worked normally for over a month, the outlet reported.
“Is this organ really going to work like a human organ? So far it’s looking like it is,” NYU Langone Transplant Institute Director Dr. Robert Montgomery told AP.
A technician replaces media in a bioreactors containing pig kidneys in a Miromatrix laboratory on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2022, in Eden Prairie, Minn.Andy Clayton-King/AP Photo
On Wednesday, the University of Alabama Birmingham also published apeer-reviewed studythat showed that a genetically altered pig kidney, which had undergone 10 gene modifications, also worked normally inside of another brain-dead patient for a full week, perThe New York Times.
“If you want to have life-sustaining kidney function, the kidneys have to do more than just make urine,” Dr. Locke said, per theTimes.
This isn’t the first time that medical experts have experimented with xenotransplantation – or transplanting an animal organ into a human. So far only 10 experimentations have been done transplanting gene-modified organs from pigs into brain-dead patients, the outlet reported.
In 2021, researchers at the University of Maryland transplanted a gene modified heart from a pig into a dying man’s body. He survived for two months before the organ failed, and the organ was later found to have had traces of a virus known to affect pigs, per theTimes.
Dr. Locke told the publication that the next step is doing a clinical trial transplanting the modified pig organs with live patients, and are in talks with the Food and Drug Administration to do so.
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The studies come after the Centers for Disease Controlreportedthat there were nearly 800,000 adults in the U.S. living with end-stage kidney disease and
Kidneys are the biggest organ in need in the U.S. with over 100,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant out of the 121,678 people waiting for a lifesaving organ, per theNational Kidney Foundation.
source: people.com
