Medical professionals in China made history when they did the first liver swap from a pig to a person. In May 2024, at the First Affiliat...
In May 2024, at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, doctors did the world's first liver transplant on a 71-year-old patient. The liver was genetically modified and came from an 11-month-old pig.
The patient lived for 171 days after the surgery, which is the longest time someone has ever been alive after a pig-to-human liver transfer, according to the hospital. Hepatitis B and liver cancer made the 71-year-old man's liver sick, so he couldn't have normal treatment or get a human liver.
Doctors put in a liver from a Diannan tiny pig that had been genetically modified. Ten changes were made to genes in the pig's liver that were meant to make blood clots safer and less likely to be rejected by the human immune system. The transplant worked really well for the first month. The liver made bile and proteins that help the blood clot without showing any signs of rejection right away.
But things went wrong on day 38 when the patient got xenotransplantation-associated thrombotic microangiopathy (xTMA), a dangerous disease linked to immune reactions and blood vessel damage.
Treatments helped control the illness, but the patient later died on day 171 after multiple episodes of internal bleeding. "This case shows that a genetically modified pig liver can work in a human for a long time," said Beicheng Sun, the lead investigator.
"It is a major step forward that shows both the promise and the problems that still need to be solved, especially those related to immune system problems and blood clotting issues." The WHO says that thousands of people die every year while they are waiting for a liver surgery. There are hundreds of thousands of people in China who have liver failure, but only about 6,000 get a donation each year. Xenotransplantation, the use of animal organs, is thought by scientists to be a way to close this huge gap and save more lives. Organs, tissues, or cells from animals are put into people in xenotransplants.
Thanks to progress in gene editing, pigs have become the best candidates for organ donations because their organs are close to human organs in size and function. But for more than 40 years, one of the hardest things to do has been to keep the human immune system from rejecting these organs.
Researchers now have new hope thanks to recent progress in genetic editing and immune suppression.
David Bennett, an American who is 57 years old, was the first person in the world to receive a genetically edited pig heart in 2022. The surgery took place at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in the United States. He lived for two months afterward. In the same way, 62-year-old Richard Slayman was the first person to receive a genetically edited pig kidney at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2024. After the groundbreaking surgery, he lived for almost two months.
Scientists are getting closer to a time when organ transfers from animals to humans could save a lot of lives.