American surgeons removed a genetically modified pig kidney transplant from Towana Looney due to rejection, Science reports. The woman became the third patient to receive such an organ and survived with it for a record-breaking four months and nine days. She had previously donated a kidney to her own mother, but her organ subsequently failed, prompting her to agree to a xenotransplant. Initially, all went well, but four months later, signs of organ damage and dysfunction began to appear. The staff at NYU Langone Transplant Institute, led by its director, Robert Montgomery, who had transplanted the pig kidney, decided not to take any chances and removed it.
A patient from Alabama was returned to hemodialysis and placed on a donor kidney transplant list; she is doing well. Despite this outcome, she says she is satisfied with the procedure, which allowed her to live a full life without dialysis for 130 days. Timothy Andrews from New Hampshire, who underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, is currently living with a pig GM kidney. The first two recipients died from underlying conditions after surviving for 2-2.5 months. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already approved pilot clinical trials of such organs.
