A Boston hospital announced this Thursday that it has achieved, for the first time in the world, the transplantation of a genetically modified pig kidney to a 62-year-old patient suffering from end-stage kidney disease. The patient, identified as Richard ‘Rick’ Slayman, a resident of Weymouth City in Massachusetts, “is recovering well and will soon be discharged from the hospital,” the hospital stated. The Massachusetts General Hospital explained that the operation took place on March 16 and lasted four hours, marking “a first-class milestone” in the search for rapidly available organs for patients.
A Historic Kidney Transplant
The pig kidney was “modified with 69 genomes” using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which involves removing potentially harmful pig genes and subsequently adding human genes to make them compatible with a human body. Additionally, scientists deactivated the pig’s endogenous retroviruses to minimize potential infections. The donor pig was provided by a Massachusetts-based company called eGenesis, which specialized precisely in transplants and the modification of animal organisms to make them compatible with humans, in a process known as ‘xenotransplantation’ according to their website.
The patient, who has had type 2 diabetes and hypertension for years, previously received a human kidney in December 2018. However, five years later, the transplanted kidney began causing problems, and he had to return to dialysis, which resulted in vascular issues requiring hospital check-ups every two weeks, significantly impacting his personal life.
The hospital emphasizes that the kidney is the most demanded organ in transplant units in the United States. At that hospital alone, there is currently a waiting list of 1,400 kidney patients, and some of them die without having received a transplant, according to the American Society of Nephrology. In the United States, there are 100,000 people in need of various types of transplants (including tissues), and on average, 17 people die each day without having received one, according to the National Organ Transplantation Network.
This story was written in Spanish by Miguel Fernandez in Cultura Colectiva News.
