Scientists around the world are racing to learn how to use animal organs to save human lives, and bodies donated for research offer an important opportunity for testing.
The latest experiment announced Wednesday by New York University Langone Health Medical Center represents the longest a pig’s kidney has functioned in a person, albeit deceased, and hasn’t ended yet. The researchers will monitor kidney function for a second month.
“Is this organ really going to function like a human organ? So far, it seems that way,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the Langone transplant institute, told The Associated Press.
“It looks even better than a human kidney,” Montgomery said on July 14 as he replaced the brain-dead man’s kidneys with a single kidney from a genetically modified pig, watching as it immediately began producing urine.
The possibility that kidneys from pigs could one day help alleviate a shortage of transplantable organs persuaded the family of Maurice “Mo” Miller, 57, of upstate New York, to donate his body for the experiment.
“I had trouble with it,” his sister, Mary Miller-Duffy, told the AP. But he liked to help others and “I think this is what my brother would have wanted. So I offered them my brother.”
“It’s going to be in the medical books, and it’s going to live forever,” he added.
It is the latest in a series of events that have renewed hope for animal-to-human organ transplants, or xenotransplants, after decades of failure because human immune systems attacked the tissue of another species. What’s different this time around: Pigs are being genetically modified so that their organs are better suited to human bodies.
Last year, surgeons at the University of Maryland made history after transplanting a gene-edited pig’s heart into a dying man who had no other options. He lived for another two months until the organ failed for reasons that are not fully understood, but offer lessons for future attempts.
Now, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to allow some small but rigorous studies of pig heart or kidney transplants in patients who volunteer.
And it’s critical to answer some questions “in a non-life-threatening context,” said Montgomery, the New York University (NYU) kidney transplant surgeon who also received his own heart transplant. , and is aware of the need for a new source of organs.
More than 100,000 patients are on the nation’s transplant list and thousands die each year waiting for an organ.
Previously, NYU and a team from the University of Alabama at Birmingham had tested pig kidney transplants in patients who had died for two to three days. An NYU team had also transplanted pig hearts into donated bodies for three days of intense testing.
But how do porcine organs deal with a more common human immune attack that takes about a month to form? Only longer studies can answer that.
The surgery alone isn’t much different from the thousands Montgomery has performed, “but somewhere in your head is the magnitude of what you’re doing … recognizing that this could have a huge impact on the future of transplantation. ”, commented the doctor.
The operation had a carefully planned schedule. Earlier that day, doctors Adam Griesemer and Jeffrey Stern traveled hundreds of miles to a facility where Virginia-based Revivicor Inc. houses the genetically modified pigs, and removed kidneys that lacked a gene that would cause immediate destruction by part of the human immune system.
On their way back to NYU, Montgomery was removing both kidneys from the donated body so there would be no doubt that the soon-to-be-arrived pig kidney was working. One pig kidney was transplanted, while the other was stored for comparison when the experiment was over.
“You’re always nervous,” Griesemer said. Seeing how quickly it starts to work, “there was a lot of excitement and a lot of relief.”
Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin of the University of Maryland cautioned that it is not clear to what extent a cadaver will mimic a living patient’s reactions to a porcine organ, but noted that this research educates the public about xenotransplantation so that “people are not surprised ” when it is time to try again with the living.
FOUNTAIN: With information from AP
