The first man to receive a genetically modified kidney from a pig was released from hospital on Wednesday last week.
Richard “Rick” Slayman, 62, who had end-stage renal disease, no longer needs dialysis after the groundbreaking procedure at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard Medical School’s largest teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
How did the first pig kidney transplant go?
Slayman was diagnosed with end-stage renal disease, meaning his kidneys could no longer function on their own. He was on dialysis from 2011 to 2018, when he received his first kidney transplant from a human donor at MGH.
About five years later, the transplanted kidney showed signs of failure and in May 2023, Slayman began dialysis again. He then experienced dialysis-related complications, which are common in dialysis patients. As a result, he had to go to the hospital regularly to have blood clots removed and undergo surgical procedures, which affected his quality of life.
The “genetically modified” pig kidney was provided by eGenesis, a biotechnology company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that develops human-friendly artificial organs. The company removed harmful pig DNA from the pig donor through genetic editing and added human DNA to make the kidney more compatible with the human body.
Slayman was well enough to return home just two weeks after the four-hour procedure, which took place on March 16.
In a statement released by MGH on April 3, Slayman called “leaving the hospital today with one of the cleanest records of health I’ve had in a long time” one of the happiest moments of his life.
The procedure is an example of “xenotransplantation”: the transplanting of organs from one species to another.
The transplant was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through a single Expanded Access Protocol, or “compassionate use,” which gives patients with life-threatening illnesses access to experimental treatment.
“I would like to thank everyone who watched my story and sent well wishes, especially patients waiting for a kidney transplant. “Today marks a new beginning not only for me, but for them as well,” Slayman said.
Why is that important?
“The procedure represents an important milestone on the path to making organs more readily available to patients,” MGH said in a press release.
The success of the procedure has provided a glimmer of hope amid the organ shortage crisis in the United States and beyond.
According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, more than 103,000 people in the United States are currently waiting for an organ transplant. The network’s data also shows that 17 people die every day in the United States while waiting for an organ transplant.
“I firmly believe that xenotransplantation represents a promising solution to the organ shortage crisis,” said Leonardo V. Riella, medical director of kidney transplantation at MGH, who oversaw Slayman’s procedure.
“Although much remains to be done, this is a major symbolic event for the entire transplant community, representing a real possibility of xenotransplantation that will one day benefit large numbers of patients,” said David Classes, chief medical officer of the United Network Organ Sharing (UNOS), a non-profit organization that runs a national transplant system jointly with the US federal government, told Al Jazeera.
He added that this could help close “the gap between the need for an organ transplant and the number of organs available for transplant.”
Could interspecies organs become the norm?
More research needs to be done before organ transplants from pigs or other animals become widely available.
In January 2022, an American named David Bennett received a genetically modified pig heart that appeared to work in his body. However, in March 2022, Bennett passed away. The exact cause of death was not revealed.
In September 2023, Lawrence Faucette became the second person in the United States to receive a genetically modified pig heart. However, six weeks later he also died. The University of Maryland Medical Center, where the transplant was performed, said the heart had begun to show signs of rejection.
However, that same month, surgeons at New York University Langone Health concluded that a genetically modified pig kidney transplant had functioned normally in the brain-dead body of a human.
“All organ transplants carry the risk of rejection,” said Klassen, the UNOS chief medical officer.
Classes explained that rejection is common and signs that the body is rejecting a transplanted organ are treated with adjustments to transplant medications.
“Recent xenotransplantations have shown that scientists and researchers have managed to overcome the immediate risk of rejection with genetically modified pig organs,” said Klassen.
The UNOS chief physician added that this procedure is based on decades of research by medical specialists.
“But there is still a lot of work to be done before it can become widely available, such as clinical trials reproducing this in large numbers of patients and studying long-term outcomes.”