Towana Looney can hardly contain her anticipation as she waits to get wheeled to an operating room at the NYU Langone Health Hospital in New York City for [a] historic procedure.
“It’s going to change my life,” says Looney, a 53-year-old grandmother, from Gadsden, [Alabama].
She volunteered to become the first living person in the world to get a kidney from a new kind of genetically modified pig. Scientists hope this kind of pig will someday provide an unlimited supply of kidneys, livers, hearts, and other organs that could alleviate the chronic shortage of organs for transplantation and save thousands of patients every year.
“We’re going to make history today,” says Looney, before nurses take her in for the long, risky operation.
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“It could completely change the management of organ failure,” says Dr. Robert Montgomery, the director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, who was the lead surgeon on Looney’s operation.
