Pigs' organs have been subjected to various experiments in the hope that they can be used for human transplants. A new experiment made history after a pig kidney transplanted in a deceased person continued to work for over a month. It was reportedly the longest time a pig kidney worked in a man.
Pig Kidney Transplanted in a Brain-Dead Man
The New York team accomplished an essential step toward surgery after transplanting a pig's kidney into a brain-dead man. The kidney has been functioning normally for more than a month. They intend to undertake it on living patients ultimately.
The most recent experiment, which NYU Langone Health disclosed on Wednesday, is still ongoing and represents the longest time a pig kidney has ever worked in a living, albeit dead, person. Researchers will monitor the performance of the kidney for a second month.
Will this organ function similarly to a human organ? According to Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the transplant institute at NYU Langone, thus far, it appears to be the case.
On July 14, Montgomery replaced a dead man's kidneys with a single kidney from a genetically engineered pig and watched as it produced urine immediately. Montgomery claimed that the pig kidney looked even better than a human kidney.
The family of 57-year-old Maurice "Mo" Miller from upstate New York was convinced to donate his corpse for the experiment because of the chance that pig kidneys could one day assist in alleviating the severe shortage of transplantable organs.
His sister, Mary Miller-Duffy, admitted she found it difficult. However, according to her, her brother liked doing good deeds, and she believed he would agree, so the family donated his remains for the experiment.
"He will live on forever and be in the medical books," she said.
Pig Heart Transplant
Researchers have been using pigs' organs for various transplants. In 2022, another man received a heart transplant from a pig in a groundbreaking experiment at a Maryland hospital.
The pig heart initially worked, and periodic updates from the Maryland hospital indicated that Bennett was gradually improving. The medical facility shared a video of him working with his physical therapist while enjoying the Super Bowl from his hospital bed.
Bennett outlived one of the last significant achievements in xenotransplantation, when Baby Fae, a dying California child, lived 21 days with a baboon's heart in 1984 by a wide margin thanks to the gene-edited pig heart. However, he passed away after two months.
Bennett's son, David Bennett Jr., remained grateful because the entire experience went into a historic effort. He added that his dad knew that success was not guaranteed.
Prior attempts at these transplants, also known as xenotransplantation, have mostly failed since the patient's body rejected the animal organ quickly. This time, the Maryland surgeons used a heart from a pig that had undergone gene editing. Scientists had taken out the pig genes that cause the body to reject the organ quickly and added human genes to help the body accept the organ.
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