A 54-year-old New Jersey woman has become the second living person to receive a genetically modified pig kidney. The surgery, performed April 12 at NYU Langone Health, also included transplanting the pig’s thymus gland to prevent rejection.
The patient Lisa Pisano had a mechanical heart pump implanted a few days before the transplant. She suffered from heart failure and end-stage kidney disease and was ineligible for an organ transplant due to several other medical conditions. Her medical team says she is doing well.
“I feel fantastic,” Pisano said during a news conference Wednesday from her hospital bed via Zoom. “When this opportunity came, I said, ‘I’m going to take advantage of it.'”
It is the first time a patient with a mechanical heart pump has received an organ transplant of any kind. It is the second known transplant of a genetically modified pig kidney into a living human and the first to combine the pig’s thymus gland.
The series of procedures were carried out over a period of nine days. In the first case, surgeons implanted the heart pump, a so-called left ventricular assist device, to replace the function of her failing heart. It is used in patients who are waiting for a heart transplant or who are not eligible for a heart transplant for other reasons. Without them, Pisano’s life expectancy would have been only days or weeks.
PHOTO: JOE CARROTTA FOR NYU LANGONE HEALTH
The second operation involved transplanting pig organs. The animal’s thymus gland, which is responsible for forming the immune system, was placed under the kidney cover. The addition of the pig’s thymus is intended to reprogram Pisano’s immune system so that it is less likely to reject the kidney and hopefully allow doctors to reduce the amount of immunosuppressive medication she needs to take, Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, said during the study press conference.
It is the latest attempt to transplant an animal organ into a human – a process known as xenotransplantation – to address organ shortages and offer transplants to people who otherwise would not receive them. In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are on the national waiting list for a transplant, and 17 people die every day while waiting for an organ. Strict eligibility criteria mean organs are given priority to relatively healthy patients, leaving patients like Pisano with few other options.
Starting in 2021, the NYU team began transplanting genetically modified pig hearts and kidneys into deceased humans following brain death. With their families’ consent, the patients were placed on a ventilator so researchers could assess the viability of the pig’s organs. In one case, a pig kidney was able to function in the human body for up to two months – a record for xenotransplantation. In monkeys, pig kidneys have been shown to function for up to two years. Now scientists are testing whether they can support people who need new kidneys.