Surgeons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported on [January 20] that they had for the first time successfully transplanted kidneys from a genetically modified pig into the abdomen of a 57-year-old brain-dead man.
The announcement was the latest in a series of remarkable feats in organ transplantation. Earlier this month, surgeons at the University of Maryland transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig into a 57-year-old patient with heart failure. That patient is still alive and under observation.
According to the surgical team, the pig kidneys started functioning and making urine after about 23 minutes and continued to do so for three days, though one kidney made more urine than the other.
The patients’s own kidneys were removed, and there were no signs indicating rejection of the pig organs.
Dr. Jayme Locke, the lead surgeon, said that the procedure had closely followed all of the steps of a regular human-to-human transplant operation and that critical safety questions had been addressed, laying the groundwork for a small clinical trial with live patients that she hoped to begin by the end of the year.
