"Xenotransplantation - replacing damaged human tissues with counterparts from closely related animal species - offers a tantalizing alternative to precious human organs. But such transplants tend to fail quickly, with the remarkable exception of one woman who survived nine months after receiving a chimpanzee kidney in 1964. The problem is immune rejection. Pig cells, for instance, are coated with a carbohydrate, called alpha-gal, that triggers a strong immune reaction in humans, who lack this molecule."
"In 2024, clinicians at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston teamed up with xenotransplantation company eGenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to perform the first transplant of a pig kidney into a living person. The kidney came from an animal with 69 genomic modifications to knock out immunity-triggering antigens and dormant viral sequences while also inserting human genes that reduce inflammation and prevent abnormal blood clotting."
Every day, around two dozen people die awaiting an organ transplant in the 46 countries of the Council of Europe, together with 13 in the United States. Many patients with terminal organ failure are not even wait-listed. Xenotransplantation, replacing damaged human tissues with counterparts from closely related animal species, offers an alternative to scarce human organs. Pig cells carry the carbohydrate alpha-gal, which triggers strong immune rejection in humans. Precision genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9, combined with next-generation immunosuppressants, reduces rejection and improves outcomes. In 2024, a pig-kidney transplant from an animal with 69 genomic modifications sustained a patient for 52 days; later recipients remained stable for more than eight months before returning to dialysis.
Read at Nature
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