After more than two hours of surgery, doctors attached a genetically modified pig kidney to a large blood vessel leading from the outside of the patient's abdomen to her thigh. The doctors observed that the pig kidney began working almost immediately after it was first transplanted, and over the next 54 hours, the kidney looked pink and healthy, and soon began filtering out waste products and producing urine, before the severe rejection they expected.
The patient had previously had abnormal creatinine levels, and her markers have slowly returned after the surgery. Pigs have been a focus of research to address organ shortages. Pig heart valves have also been used successfully in humans for decades; the blood thinner heparin is derived from pig intestines; pig skin grafts have been used for burns; and Chinese surgeons have used pig corneas to restore a patient's vision.
The patient who underwent this surgery was a brain-dead patient whose family agreed to participate in this pig kidney transplant trial only after his body showed signs of kidney failure. Instead of placing the pig's kidney directly into the patient's body, doctors attached it to a blood vessel in the patient's thigh, which makes it easier for researchers to observe the patient.
This is a useful experiment! If it is fully successful, it will benefit the majority of patients with severe kidney disease. Netizen comment : Be cautious, the human heart or the origin of thought is not only what is stored in the brain, but also any part of the body that is the origin of thought.
Scientists are again looking at xenotransplants in pigs, which have the advantage of being easy to raise and having organs mature more quickly than other primates, and which can reach organ sizes very similar to those of humans in only about six months.
And, with their high reproduction rate, pigs are better able to meet the demand for organ transplants. And this time, Langone Health chose a genetically engineered pig, whose tissues and organs no longer contain substances known to trigger immediate rejection.
Instead of loading the pig kidney into the brain-dead patient with kidney dysfunction, the researchers implanted it outside the patient's body and connected it to a blood vessel in his thigh for ease of observation. Afterward, this porcine kidney almost immediately began its normal operation of filtering waste and producing urine and creatinine without immune rejection.
For decades, heart valves from pigs, heparin from pig intestines, as well as porcine skin grafts and porcine corneas, have been used successfully in human treatment. But the first problem faced in transplanting whole organs from pigs to humans is immune rejection, which is largely due to alpha-Gal antigens produced by genes carried by pigs.
The success of the operation has so energized doctors that they are planning future experimental transplants using pig livers, lungs, and hearts. When I first heard about transplanting pig kidneys into people, it seemed absurd, but in fact, this time it wasn't a regular pig kidney, but one from a genetically modified pig, and it was done mainly to prevent rejection. The idea of using pig organs for transplants is not new, and some have been successful.
Organ donation is a prerequisite for organ transplants. Organ transplantation is a gift from another life, and with it, organs that have lost their function due to fatal diseases can finally be replaced, and human life can continue, a miracle that belongs to medicine.
However, Huang Jiefu, chairman of the China Organ Transplantation Development Foundation, pointed out that there is a great demand for organ transplants in China, with roughly 300,000 people waiting for their organs to be adapted each year, but only about 20,000 are able to complete their transplants, and most of them die in the long process of waiting for their organs. Organ transplants are facing a serious shortage of supply.
This experiment is an important step in the decades-long quest to save lives using animal organ xenotransplantation, paving the way for pig kidney or heart transplants in living humans in the coming years, and giving hope to the thousands of people waiting for organ transplants.