In what is being called a “breakthrough” in medicine during the times when the lack of an organ for transplant can push people to death, a pig’s kidney was successfully transplanted in a brain dead patient. Miraculously, the organ worked as a typical kidney does in a human, astounding the surgeons who performed the operation.
The temporary attachment could be a “potential miracle” and help become a renewable source of organs for transplant for humans, the lead surgeon said.
The experiment was conducted on September 25th on a brain dead patient who had wanted to be an organ donor. His family was disappointed when they were told that his organs cannot be used. However, the opportunity to be a part of the surgery came as a “sense of relief” to them, Robert Montgomery, the director of the transplant institute that led the 2-hour experiment in New York University said.
“It (the pig kidney) did what it’s supposed to do, which is remove waste and make urine (in the human body),” he said.
Essentially, the kidney is supposed to remove creatinine, a waste product. The pig kidney was able to achieve this by reducing the level of the molecule which was increased in the patient before the surgery.
ALSO READ: Hyderabad couple tries selling kidneys to clear debts
The kidney was joined with the blood vessels on the top of one of the patient’s legs to observe the process better and take biopsy samples.
Though it has been shown in earlier studies that pig kidneys can be used in nonhuman primates with a viable timespan of up to one year, there weren’t any experiments done to back the same in humans. Montgomery is the first to even attempt doing it in humans.
The kidney used belonged to a genetically modified pig. The gene responsible for producing a sugar, which could result in organ rejection after a strong immune response was removed from the animal. A biotech firm called Revivicor, a company of United Therapeutics, had done this genetic editing.
However, once the surgery proved that the kidney was working well, the patient was removed from the ventilator and let pass away. Hence, the viable time period of the kidney in humans still has to be ascertained. “It is still a question what would happen three weeks from now, three months, three years,” Montgomery said.
“The only way we’re really going to be able to answer that is to move this into a living human trial. But I think this is a really important intermediate step, which tells us that at least initially, things are probably going to be okay,” he added.
The findings will be submitted to get published in a scientific journal next month, while a clinical trial is expected to be conducted in 1-2 years, Montgomery said.
Though the development has been applauded by scientific experts across the world, they await peer review to make any conclusions.
ALSO READ: Depressive symptoms linked to kidney function decline
Hynek Mergental, a surgeon at the University of Birmingham in Britain said “This news is a significant scientific achievement in the xenotransplantation field.”
If the findings of this experiment get confirmed, “it would be a major step forward in the organ transplant field that might solve the critical shortage of donor organs,” he said.
This could be life-saving for the thousands of people who die due to the lack of organs for transplant. In America alone, nearly 90% of the 107,000 people waiting for an organ need a kidney. 17 Americans lose their lives every day due to the shortage.
