Implanted pig kidney in a human still working after a month

In a critical step towards animal-to-human organ transplants, a team of NYU surgeons successfully transplanted a genetically altered pig kidney into a brain-dead man and said it continued to function for more than a month.

Usually, the kidney is rejected within minutes in xenotransplantation (transplanting living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another), but physicians at NYU Langone Health observed that this pig kidney began producing urine and took over the functions of a human kidney such as filtering toxins.

The team at NYU is tracking the kidney’s performance for a second month and hopes to try the transplant on living patients soon. 

Successes in animal-to-human organ transplants are critical to saving lives. In the U.S. alone, more than 100,000 patients are on transplant lists and thousands die each year waiting.