Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, prepares a pig kidney for transplant to a brain-dead man in New York on July 14 – Photo: AP
Surgeons at the Langone Institute for Transplantation at New York University (USA) say that this is the longest a pig kidney has remained active in a person.
Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU’s Langone Transplant Institute, said the pig kidneys were edited to remove genes that make biomolecules that the human immune system attacks and rejects. Pig kidneys have now survived for more than a month in a transplant recipient.
These results provide hope for any future studies on living patients.
“We have now gathered more evidence that in pig kidneys, removing the genes that trigger acute rejection, and using approved immunosuppressive drugs, will help kidney transplants to be long-term performers,” said Montgomery. “
The person who received the pig kidney transplant was Mr. Maurice “Moe” Miller, 57, who was suffering from a brain tumor and brain death.
“I thought a lot before deciding to let my brother appear in the exam. I think my brother wants the same. “He will live on with a medical history,” Mary Miller-Duffy, the brain-dead man’s sister, told The Associated Press.
In the US, there are currently more than 103,000 people in need of organ transplants, of which 88,000 are in need of kidney transplants. Thousands of people die every year while waiting for a kidney transplant.
Scientists hope that this test will go so far that animal parts can be used to save lives.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to allow researchers to selectively transplant pig hearts and kidneys into volunteer patients.
It is known that at the same time, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UK) also reported a pair of pig kidneys that functioned normally for 7 days in a donor’s body.
(Tagstotranslate)pig kidney transplant
