US Surgeons Successfully , Transplant a Pig Kidney, Into a Human.
The BBC reports that U.S. surgeons claim to have made a transplant breakthrough that could help solve donor organ shortages.
The surgeons say they have successfully transplanted a pig's kidney into a human recipient.
According to the BBC, the human patient was brain-dead and already on artificial life support with no chance of recovery.
The transplanted kidney came from a genetically-modified pig.
The genetic modifications to the pig prevent the organ from being rejected.
The BBC points out that the work has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.
Experts call the transplant procedure the most advanced experiment in the field so far.
We observed a kidney that basically functioned like a human kidney transplant, that appeared to be compatible in as much as it did all the things that a normal human kidney would do, Dr. Robert Montgomery, Lead investigator, via BBC.
It functioned normally, and did not appear to be undergoing rejection, Dr. Robert Montgomery, Lead investigator, via BBC.
According to the BBC, the FDA has approved the use of the genetically-modified pig organs for research in this field.
Animal to human transplantation has been something that we have studied for decades now, and it's really interesting to see this group take that step forward, Dr. Maryam Khosravi, NHS kidney and intensive care doctor, via BBC