First recipient of pig kidney dies
Pig Kidney- On May 12th, a man who had a very serious kidney disease and had received a new kidney from a pig that had been genetically changed earlier this year, has passed away. This happened at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
“The Mass General transplant team is very sad that Mr. Rick Slayman passed away suddenly. We don’t think his recent transplant caused his death.”
Slayman, who is 62 years old and lives in Weymouth, Massachusetts, got a new organ in March. The surgery took four hours. The hospital said it was a big step forward in making organs more available for patients who need them.
“Our family is very sad that our dear Rick has passed away suddenly, but we’re comforted knowing he inspired a lot of people,” said Slayman’s family in a statement.
Slayman got a new kidney from a person at the hospital in 2018 after being on dialysis for seven years. But after five years, the kidney stopped working, so he had to go back to dialysis.
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A special kidney came from eGenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They made it from a pig that they changed genetically. They removed genes that could hurt a human who gets the kidney and added some human genes to make it work better in people. The company also stopped viruses in pigs that could make humans sick.
Researchers found that kidneys from pigs edited similarly to those by eGenesis were transplanted into monkeys. These monkeys lived for an average of 176 days after the transplant, and in one case, a monkey lived for more than two years. This study was reported in October in the journal Nature.
To stop the patient’s body from rejecting the pig organ, doctors used a new drug called tegoprubart, made by Eledon Pharmaceuticals. Over 100,000 people in the U.S. need an organ transplant, with kidneys being the most needed.
NYU doctors put pig kidneys into people who were brain-dead before.
In January 2022, doctors at the University of Maryland tried putting a special pig heart into a 57-year-old man who was very sick with heart problems. Sadly, he passed away two months later.
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