On the last day of March, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital began an operation that they hoped might lead to a permanent change in how kidneys are transplanted in people. That morning’s patient was not a person. It was a pig, lying anesthetized on a table. The pig was missing one kidney and needed an…
Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after she experienced acute organ rejection, NYU Langone Health officials said on Friday. Towana Looney, 53, lived with the kidney for 130 days, which is longer than anyone else has tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal. She has resumed dialysis, hospital officials…
More than 100,000 Americans are on waiting lists for donor organs, most needing a kidney. Only 25,000 human donor kidneys become available each year. Twelve Americans on the kidney list die every day on average. Scientists first transplanted genetically engineered pig organs into other animals and then to brain-dead human patients. In 2022, researchers received…
Pope Francis was resting on Monday at the Rome hospital where he has spent the past 10 days with pneumonia, a complex infection and now kidney problems that have all left him in critical condition, the Vatican said. The Vatican said in a statement on Monday morning that “the night went well, the Pope slept…
Surgeons in Boston successfully transplanted the kidney of a genetically modified pig into a 66-year-old man with kidney failure last month, Massachusetts General Hospital announced on Friday. It was the fourth pig kidney transplant in the United States, and the first of three that will be done at Mass General as part of a new…