WASHINGTON (AP) — Chinese researchers are reporting new steps in the quest for animal-to-human organ transplants – with a successful pig kidney transplant and a hint Wednesday that pig livers might eventually be useful, too. A Chinese patient is the person in world known to be living with a gene-edited pig kidney. And the same research team also reported an experiment implanting a pig liver into a brain-dead person.
Scientists are so their organs are more humanlike in hopes of alleviating a transplant shortage. Two initial xenotransplants in the U.S.
— and – were short-lived. But two additional pig kidney recipients so far are thriving – an transplanted in November and a transplanted in January. A U.
S. clinical trial is about to begin. Nearly three weeks after the kidney surgery the Chinese patient “is very well” and the pig kidney likewise is functioning very well, Dr.
Lin Wang of Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an told reporters in a briefing this week. Wang, part of the hospital’s xenotransplant team, said the kidney recipient remains in the hospital for testing. Chinese media have reported she is a 69-year-old woman diagnosed with kidney failure eight years ago.
But Wang pointed to a potential next step in xenotransplantation — learning to transplant pig livers. His team reported Wednesday in the journal Nature that a pig liver transplanted into a brain-dead person survived for 10 days, with no early signs of rejection. .