3 minute read
a team led by dr. robert montgomery at nyu langone health performed the procedure last month, usa today reported . pig organs are usually rejected by the human body, because they contain a sugar molecule called alpha-gal that our bodies do not recognize, according to the associated press . this pig, however, had been genetically-engineered without that sugar. its kidney was then attached to blood vessels outside the body of a patient who had died, but was kept on a ventilator. the pig’s thymus was also transplanted, as an attempt to ward off any potential negative effects in the immune system.
“it was better than i think we even expected,” montgomery told the new york times . “it just looked like any transplant i’ve ever done from a living donor. a lot of kidneys from deceased people don’t work right away, and take days or weeks to start. this worked immediately.”
advertisement
there’s a huge need for kidney transplants in canada and around the world. in 2019, the last year for which we have data, 77 per cent of the 4,419 canadians on a waiting list for a transplant were waiting for a kidney. kidney failure can be fatal: we need kidneys to cleans toxins and waste from our body in order to live. current wait times for a kidney can be anywhere from a few months to several years, according to the canadian kidney foundation . and because donor kidneys are rare, many people with kidney disease don’t qualify to receive donations, and instead rely on dialysis — a process that either involves blood being removed from the body , filtered, and then put back in, or else cleansing fluid inserted into the abdomen with a catheter.
attempts to use animal organs as life-saving transplants for humans, or xenotransplantation, go back to the 1600s, ap reports. in 1963 and 1964, a doctor named keith reemtsma transplanted several humans with chimpanzee kidneys . all of the patients died of infection, but many people were surprised by how long it took — the most successful transplant was in a woman who lived another nine months after the surgery.
advertisement
twenty years later, in 1984, a baby girl in california was born with an underdeveloped heart. because infant transplant hearts are so rare, “baby fae” received a heart transplant from a baboon . she lived for 21 days — two weeks longer than any other human had lived after receiving an animal heart.
