Historic Moment: Man Receives Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Transplant
MASSACHUSETTS — Breaking news from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as the first man to receive a genetically modified kidney transplant from a pig has been discharged from the hospital.
The 62-year-old patient, Richard “Rick” Slayman of Weymouth, Massachusetts, was sent home on Wednesday, just two weeks after the ground-breaking surgery at MGH.
Organ transplants from genetically modified pigs have faced failures in the past, but the success of this procedure has been hailed by scientists as a historic milestone in the field of transplantation.
The news was shared in a press release by MGH, Harvard Medical School’s largest teaching hospital in Boston.
The hospital revealed that Slayman had been battling end-stage kidney disease and required an organ transplant. His doctors successfully transplanted a genetically-edited pig kidney into his body during a four-hour surgery on 16 March.
Slayman’s kidney is now functioning well, and he no longer requires dialysis.
In a statement, Slayman expressed his joy at being able to leave the hospital and return home, calling it “one of the happiest moments” of his life.
He had a human kidney transplant from a deceased donor in 2018, which began to fail last year. Doctors then proposed the idea of a pig kidney transplant, which Slayman saw as a way to provide hope for others in need of a transplant.
The pig kidney he received was modified by eGenesis, a pharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, to improve its compatibility with humans by removing harmful pig genes and adding certain human genes.
The procedure was approved by the Food and Drug Administration under an Expanded Access Protocol, granting Slayman access to experimental treatment due to his life-threatening condition.
Dr. Winfred Williams, Slayman’s doctor at MGH, described the transplant as a historic step towards addressing the organ shortage crisis, particularly for ethnic minority communities disproportionately affected by the shortage.
According to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, over 100,000 Americans are in need of a lifesaving organ transplant, while the number of donors in 2023 was just under 23,500.
While this is the first pig kidney transplanted into a human, it is not the first pig organ used in a transplant procedure. Previous attempts with pig heart transplants were unsuccessful, but the success of Slayman’s procedure offers hope for the future of organ transplantation. – BBC
