A woman who received a genetically modified pig kidney is recovering quickly, a team from New York University Langone Health said April 26, Fox News reported.
This week, patient Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman, took a walker and took her first steps, doctors said.
The patient’s combination of heart and kidney failure made her condition too severe to undergo a traditional transplant, and she had no choice but to accept a porcine kidney transplant.
The university doctors had to design the operation in two stages: first implant a mechanical pump to keep the heart beating and, a few days later, transplant a kidney from a genetically modified pig.
In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for organ donation. Most of them need a kidney and thousands die waiting.
Hoping to provide patients with organs for transplants, several biotechnology companies are genetically modifying pigs so that their organs are less likely to be rejected and destroyed by the human immune system.
Previously, at the University of Maryland, two men who had no other option had pig hearts transplanted. But both died within a few months.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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