Last week, surgeons removed a genetically modified pig kidney from a critically ill patient after the organ was damaged by a lack of blood flow from the woman's heart pump, according to officials at New York University's Langone Transplant Institute.
Lisa Pisano, 54, a patient who remains hospitalized, underwent kidney dialysis again after the pig's organs were harvested. She lived with her transplanted organ for 47 days, according to Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the institute. Her kidney showed no signs of organ rejection.
“Lisa remains in stable condition and her left ventricular assist device is still functioning,” Dr. Montgomery said of the heart pump. “We hope that she will be able to return home to her family soon.”
“Lisa is a pioneer and a hero in the effort to create sustainable options for people waiting for organ transplants,” he added.
In April, Pisano became the second patient to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig. Her case was particularly complicated, as she had heart and kidney failure and received the organ just eight days after being fitted with a heart pump.
Pisano would have been at risk of dying without a heart pump, a device implanted in patients needing a heart transplant, but there is a severe shortage of available human kidneys from donors and her heart condition made a kidney transplant impossible.
Officials at NYU Langone Health say she is the first patient to receive any kind of organ transplant with a heart pump, even though patients with kidney failure typically cannot receive heart pumps because of their high risk of death.
The first patient to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig was Richard Suleiman, 62, who underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Brigham Hospital in Boston in March.
He recovered well enough to be discharged from hospital two weeks after the operation, but suffered complicated health problems and died within two months.
In recent years, technological advances such as cloning and gene editing have made great strides in the technology for transplanting animal organs into humans.
However, the procedure is still experimental, and so far only patients who are ineligible for a human organ transplant and who are so seriously ill that they would die if they did not receive treatment have been approved to receive an animal organ transplant.
The two pig kidney transplants performed this year were approved under the Food and Drug Administration's compassionate use, or expanded access, program for patients with life-threatening conditions.
