Leonardo Riella, MD, PhD, Tatsuo Kawai, MD, PhD, and Nahel Elias, MD, surgeons at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital, successfully transplanted a kidney from a genetically edited pig kidney into a living patient — the first procedure of its kind.
The 62-year-old patient, Richard Slayman, has diabetes and hypertension and has been in treatment at Massachusetts General for more than 10 years, including receiving a human kidney in 2018 that failed five years later, according to a March 21 news release from the hospital.
The procedure was performed under a single FDA Expanded Access Protocol, a "compassionate use" granted to a single patient or group of patients with life-threatening illnesses or conditions to gain access to experimental treatments or trials when no comparable treatment options or therapies exist.
"I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for thousands of people who need a transplant to survive," Mr. Slayman said in the release.
The new kidney began functioning shortly after the procedure took place, according to the release. Mr. Slayman's condition continues to improve and he is expected to be discharged soon.
More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for a transplant, and 17 people die each day waiting for an organ, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
"Seventy years after the first kidney transplant and six decades following the advent of immunosuppressive medications, we stand on the brink of a monumental breakthrough in transplantation," Dr. Riella said. "I am firmly convinced that xenotransplantation represents a promising solution to the organ shortage crisis."