A man removed a record pig kidney after 9 months of life

Surgeons in Massachusetts In a statement to WIRED, General Hospital confirmed that a genetically engineered pig kidney was removed from a 67-year-old man in New Hampshire after a period of declining kidney function. The organ worked for nearly nine months, longer than previous pig organ transplants, before it was removed on October 23.

Andrews’ team received the pig’s kidney on January 25 after more than two years of dialysis for end-stage kidney disease. His rare blood type meant he faced a much longer wait for a human donor kidney than most patients, who wait an average of 3 to 5 years for a kidney.

The shortage of human donors has forced scientists to look to animals as a potential source of organs. Kidneys are in high demand, with nearly 90,000 people waiting to receive a kidney in the United States alone. Because of the organ shortage, the United States will perform only 28,000 kidney transplants in 2024.

Pig organs are being explored as an option, although genetic differences between pigs and humans mean they would be quickly rejected if transplanted into a person. So scientists have turned to gene editing to make pig organs more compatible with the human body, and have so far performed a handful of experimental transplants.

Andrews was the fourth person in the world to receive a kidney from a genetically engineered donor pig. The first, Richard Slimman, who also had surgery at Massachusetts General, died in May 2024, about two months after the transplant. A second person, Lisa Pisano, underwent a pig kidney transplant and heart pump operation at NYU Langone Health, but the kidney was removed in May 2024 after less than two months due to failure. Pisano later died. Towana Looney became the third recipient of a pig kidney, again at NYU Langone, and lived with the organ for more than four months before surgeons removed it this April due to organ rejection.

Since Andrews’ surgery, a patient in China has received an edited pig kidney, and surgeons at Massachusetts General have transplanted one into another patient, 54-year-old Bill Stewart, bringing the total number of people known to have received pig kidneys to six.

Before the pig kidney transplant, two patients received genetically engineered pig hearts at the University of Maryland in 2022 and 2023 but never recovered well enough to leave the hospital. Both of them died within two months of the operation.