There is a third person receiving a transplant
The New York City Hospital: Annihilation and Rejection of a Genetically Engineered Pig Kidney after a Heart Transplant
NEW YORK – Towana Looney can hardly contain her anticipation as she waits to get wheeled to an operating room at the NYU Langone Health hospital in New York City for an historic procedure.
After getting a heart pump, Lisa Pisano received a genetically engineered pig for two of her body parts. The addition of the thymus, a small organ in the upper chest that’s part of the immune system, was meant to help prevent rejection. That surgery was also performed at NYU Langone. After her transplant, her doctors decided to remove her pig kidney due to a series of episodes of the heart pump not passing enough blood through her new organ. The kidney needs steady blood flow so that it can produce urine and filter waste. Pisano’s kidneys was failing without it. She passed away in July.
Montgomery, who himself received a human heart transplant in 2018, knows there’s a lot more work to be done to see if this will work for Looney and other patients. He’s very happy.
Looney was discharged earlier than expected from the hospital, but had to return for a few days to have her medication adjusted. Nevertheless, her doctors remain optimistic.
PERV: A Transplanted Pig Kidney Gives a Grandmother — a Big Day in Pittsburgh,” says Looney, a Pioneer
He says the company is taking extra precautions to prevent the organs from spreading any pig viruses to people. Everyone in the operating room will be tested again four months after surgery to make sure they don’t catch the pig virus known as PERV.
“I have a lot of concerns,” says L. Syd M Johnson. “There’s a lot of hope, but hope is not scientific evidence. And it’s not a great way to do science — as a series of one-off experiments by different research teams, using different protocols, organs with different gene edits, and dying patients who have run out of options.”
Looney donated one of her kidneys to her mother in 1999. A few years later, she developed chronic high blood pressure during a pregnancy and her remaining kidney failed in 2016. Since then, she’s been on dialysis for four hours a day, three days a week.
She is in better shape than other people who have had this procedure. Montgomery says they are hopeful as he scrubs into the surgery. “We have an amazing team and everything’s going like clockwork.”
It is a big day. She’s a true pioneer,” says Dr. Jayme Locke. She was a doctor at the University of Alabama atBirmingham before moving to NYU. She’s assisting Montgomery today.
A big screen on the wall shows the flight path of another set of surgeons. They’re coming back from a research farm in Virginia where one of their pigs have been cloned and has been bred with two of the company’s organs. The company allowed NPR to tour their facility in the spring.
After they’re done stitching the kidney to the blood supply, the surgeons take a crucial step: They unclamp the artery and vein to let Looney’s blood flow into the pig organ.
There is a screen on the wall showing the helicopter approaching NYU Langone. The chopper swoops through the clear blue sky along the East River and sets down on the helipad. The arriving crew put a white box, the size of a microwave oven, in the operating room and rushed it to the pig’s two kidneys on a wheelchair.
Source: A transplanted pig kidney offers a grandmother hope for life without dialysis
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“We’re not entirely sure exactly how we’re going to put them in yet until I have a look at them. The plan is to only put one in, but we may use the vessels from the other one as well,” Montgomery says.
The team then starts another long, delicate task: preparing the pig kidneys for implantation. This involves removing fat and locating veins and arteries.
“We’re sewing the vein now,” Montgomery says. “I just did my side of the vein, and we’re done with the vein We’re going onto the arteries.
“Here we go,” Montgomery says to another round of applause as urine starts gushing out. “Look at that. That is great. Look at that. Beautiful. That’s gorgeous. It’s pouring out. Montgomery said he was going to have wet socks and laughed as urine hit him.
Couldn’t have gone better. Could not have gone better,” he says. At this point, we’re really pleased. It’s early days, but you know it. It’s a big deal. We’re off to a good start.
“When you really think about what we just did it’s pretty amazing,” he says. “Putting a pig organ in a human being and having it work right away? It’s like Stars Wars stuff, right?
There are more than 103,000 people waiting for transplants, and 17 die every day. Kidneys are the most-needed organs.
Source: A transplanted pig kidney offers a grandmother hope for life without dialysis
How a Transplanted Pig Can Offer a Grandmother Hope For Life Without Dialysis? David Ayares, CEO, and Research Director at Revivicor
There was nothing that worked before this. “This has been a long journey for her,” says Locke, her long-time physician. Today she is here. I’m very happy for her to get her life back.
“It’s a super exciting day,” agrees David Ayares, president and chief scientific officer at Revivicor, who’s been waiting outside the operating room to hear how the surgery went. It’s unbelievable.
“The goal is an unlimited supply of organs,” Ayares. We’re trying to figure out how to fix the organ shortage. Having an unlimited supply of organs is what it’s all about.
Critics say there is a need for a careful study to make sure pig kidneys are evaluated properly, instead of being performed one by one.
“Compassionate use experiments have been helpful in the advancement of the science of transplantation,” said Michael Gusmano, a bioethicist at Lehigh University College of Health.
“The gene edits are not made to benefit the pigs. The gene-editing is an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole — to sand off the incompatible edges of a pig organ to force it to work in a human. But what does that do to the pig? How does it affect their health?” She says it’s true. The environments in which pigs are raised deprive them of a number of their basic social, psychological and physical needs.
Revivicor is asking the FDA to approve a formal clinical trial that could start as soon as 2025. A rival called eGenesis, of Cambridge, Mass., is also testing organs from another kind of modified pig.
Johnson is also skeptical that the company is doing enough to prevent the spread of pig viruses to people. There was evidence one of the pig heart recipients got infected with a pig virus called porcine cytomegalovirus.
Source: A transplanted pig kidney offers a grandmother hope for life without dialysis
Peeing with a transplanted pig kidney: “What do we really need to know about kidney infection and transplant without dialysis?”
She’s enjoying cooking, consuming a wider variety of food and drinks, and exploring New York even though she wears a mask to avoid crowds. She’s taking medication to reduce her risk of rejecting the kidney, making her vulnerable to infections.
“I was like, ‘Wow!’ ” She says so. “I told the nurse, ‘I’m peeing!’ She said that she wouldn’t be kidding. You’re peeing a lot, which is a good thing.’ It was exciting to me.”
Source: A transplanted pig kidney offers a grandmother hope for life without dialysis
An Example of How Transplanting an Animal to Another Species Can Save Them All: A Case Studies of a Newborn Kidney Deficit
Her family and friends have been very supportive, although one friend objected to the procedure, saying “it’s not in the Bible for humans to receive animal parts,” Looney says. “I said, ‘You ate bacon this morning for breakfast didn’t you?’ ” laughing. “It’s lifesaving.’ “
Looney’s looking forward to returning to her job as a part-time cashier at a Dollar General, traveling and spending more time with her family, especially her two adult daughters and two grandchildren.
After a procedure at NYU Langone Health, the woman is off of Kidney Deficiency. She was discharged from the hospital on December 6, and her doctors say she is in good health. Her surgery is an example of using the practice of transplants from one species to another.
New York City Hospital’s doctors successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a woman following a heart transplant earlier this year. The hospital’s director said the woman’s blood wasn’t passing through the pig kidney and doctors had to remove it because her heart pump wasn’t working. She was diagnosed with severe heart failure in 2015 and required a heart transplant.