https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/health/pig-kidney-organ-transplant.html

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Health|Surgeons Transplant Pig Kidney Into a Patient, a Medical
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/health/
pig-kidney-organ-transplant.html

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Surgeons Transplant Pig Kidney Into a Patient, a Medical Milestone

The man continues to improve, doctors said. Organs from genetically
engineered pigs one day may make dialysis obsolete.

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Surgeons hunch over a patient during an operation.
Surgeons performed the world's first genetically modified pig kidney
transplant into a living human at Massachusetts General Hospital on
March 16.Credit...Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital, via
Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images
Roni Caryn Rabin

By Roni Caryn Rabin

March 21, 2024Updated 6:44 p.m. ET

Surgeons in Boston have transplanted a kidney from a genetically
engineered pig into an ailing 62-year-old man, the first procedure of
its kind. If successful, the breakthrough offers hope to hundreds of
thousands of Americans whose kidneys have failed.

So far, the signs are promising.

Kidneys remove waste products and excess fluid from the blood. The
new kidney began producing urine shortly after the surgery last
weekend and the patient's condition continues to improve, according
to physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital, known as Mass
General. He is already walking the halls of the hospital and may be
discharged soon.

The patient is a Black man, and the procedure may have special
significance for Black patients, who suffer high rates of end-stage
kidney disease.

A new source of kidneys "could solve an intractable problem in the
field -- the inadequate access of minority patients to kidney
transplants," said Dr. Winfred Williams, associate chief of the
nephrology division at Mass General and the patient's primary kidney
doctor.

If kidneys from genetically modified animals can be transplanted on a
large scale, dialysis "will become obsolete," said Dr. Leonardo V.
Riella, medical director for kidney transplantation at Mass General.
The hospital's parent organization, Mass General Brigham, developed
the transplant program.

Over 800,000 Americans have kidney failure and require dialysis, a
procedure that filters toxins from the blood. Over 100,000 are on a
waiting list to receive a transplanted kidney from a living or dead
human donor. End-stage kidney disease is three times more common
among Black Americans than among white people.

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