Pig Organ Transplants
Several research teams have advanced the science of animal-to-human transplantation, or xenotransplantation, by leaps and bounds over the last year and a half. They’ve shown that organs taken from pigs genetically modified to more closely resemble humans can survive the initial journey into a human body without acute rejection. In January, a University of Alabama team became the first to document transplanting two kidneys into a brain-dead patient.
As important as these achievements are, they’re the only first step to making xenotransplantation a realistic solution for addressing the chronic donor organ shortage, and there have been recent setbacks as well. In March 2022, a terminally ill man who became the first living recipient of a modified pig heart unexpectedly died two months after the operation, possibly due to a hidden infection transmitted via the pig heart.
