The world’s first transplant of a genetically modified kidney from a pig into a living human has been successfully done by doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Rick Slayman, a 62-year-old man, from Weymouth, Massachusetts is the patient. He was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease, according to CNN.
Slayman said he had been a patient of the hospital’s transplant program for 11 years in a written statement from the patient provided by the hospital.
He received a previous kidney from a human in 2018 after living with diabetes and high blood pressure for many years, which means that this is not his first kidney transplant.
He resumed dialysis in 2023 as kidney began to show signs of failure five years later.
He said his doctors suggested that he try a pig kidney when he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease last year.
“I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” Slayman said in the written statement.
The operation was performed by Dr Tatsuo Kawai, director of the Legorreta Center for Clinical Transplant Tolerance. He confirmed that the organ was exactly the same size as a human kidney.