Source: World Wide Web
According to Reuters reported on the 19th, U.S. surgeons successfully conducted a pig kidney transplant test on the human body, and did not immediately trigger the rejection of the recipient immune system. This could be a major development that could ultimately help alleviate the severe shortage of transplanted organs in humans.
Reuters: U.S. surgeons successfully conducted pig kidney transplant trials on patients
The trial, conducted at NYU Langone Health at New York University, used a pig whose genes had been altered to no longer contain a molecule that triggers a rejection response in the body. The transplant patient, a female brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction, agreed to the trial before her life support system was cut off.
Over a period of three days, the new kidneys were connected to the patient's blood vessels and kept in vitro for researchers to monitor at any time.
Dr Robert Montgomery, the transplant surgeon in charge of the study, told Reuters that "functional test results for transplanted kidneys 'look pretty normal,'" that the new kidney produced "as much urine as expected, and that there was no evidence that unmodified pig kidney transplantation into non-human primates triggered a strong early rejection response."
Montgomery said the kidney transplant trial should pave the way for trials expected to be conducted in patients with end-stage renal failure over the next year or two, and the series of trials could test the regimen as a short-term treatment option for critically ill patients until a human kidney is available, or a permanent transplant is available.
Montgomery also said the current trial only involved a single kidney transplant, and the kidneys remained in vitro for only three days, so any future trial could potentially uncover new hurdles to overcome.