A 54-year-old woman from New Jersey (USA) has become the second living person in the world to have a kidney transplanted from a pig, albeit a genetically modified one, reported the US public broadcaster NPR. “I haven’t felt this good in years,” Lisa Pisano, the transplant patient at New York University Hospital, told NPR.
Pisano became the second living person in the world to have a kidney transplanted from a genetically modified pig to replace his own failing organs, his doctors announced. A Massachusetts man was the first to receive a pig kidney last month.
Pisano also received a thymus from the same genetically modified pig to help prevent his body from rejecting the kidney, as well as a pump to strengthen his weakened heart, the American media explained.
“I’m amazed,” Pisano said during a bedside interview days before her kidney transplant was publicly announced. “I’m absolutely shocked that it was an option for me. Because I didn’t even think I had that option,” she told NPR.
Pisano’s transplant is the latest advance in efforts by scientists at several centers to use genetically modified pigs to solve the persistent shortage of organs for transplants.
More than 103,000 people are currently on the waiting list to receive organs in the United States alone. About 17 die every day because they can’t get one.
“We are in a new universe in terms of transplants,” said doctor Robert Montgomery, who directs the Langone Transplant Institute at New York University, where the operation was performed. “This would be a sustainable and unlimited source of organs. This would be transformative,” he added in statements to the aforementioned media.
When Pisano arrived at the hospital, he was weeks, maybe even days, away from dying, Montgomery said. Years of diabetes had taken a terrible toll on him. He had suffered multiple heart attacks and was on dialysis to compensate for kidney failure.
Pisano was not eligible to receive a human organ transplant because he had many other health problems, especially serious heart problems. So he took the opportunity to get a pig kidney.
“His kidney is working better than yours or mine. So we are optimistic that he will be able to come home and spend time with his children and grandchildren and live a comfortable life,” Montgomery said in the NPR interview.
