She Became The Third Living Recipient Of A Pig Kidney Transplant, And She No Longer Requires Dialysis
Just last month, a woman became the third living recipient of a pig kidney transplant. Now, her kidney is functioning well, and she no longer requires dialysis.
The transplant recipient was 53-year-old Towana Looney from Alabama. In 1999, she donated a kidney to her mother, but a few years later, she developed high blood pressure linked to preeclampsia during pregnancy. The condition led her to develop chronic kidney disease.
In 2016, she started dialysis, which does the work of the kidneys by helping to remove waste and extra fluid from the blood. Looney was added to the transplant list in 2017.
As a previous kidney donor, she was given higher priority than the average person. However, it was a major challenge to find a kidney that matched her immune system.
“Through exposure to other people’s tissue, through pregnancies and blood transfusions, she has become sensitized to nearly every tissue type in the population, making it nearly impossible to find a kidney match,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, the leader of Looney’s procedure and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. “She was waiting for a one-in-a-million match.”
There was another option available to Looney, though. She could undergo an experimental procedure that involved getting a new kidney from a gene-edited pig. She agreed to do the procedure, and three weeks after receiving the pig kidney, she had a lot more energy.
“Emotionally, I’m overjoyed,” said Looney. “I don’t know what I want to do next, what I want to eat next, where I want to go.”
The pig kidney functioned just like a kidney from a living human donor once it was hooked up to the bloodstream.
Looney’s new kidney came from Revivicor Inc., a company owned by United Therapeutics. The company altered the pig’s genetics by removing pig genes and replacing them with human ones.
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Looney is the first living patient to get a kidney with 10 gene edits. The previous two recipients got kidneys with only one gene removed.
In the past, the kidney with 10 edits had been tested in brain-dead organ donors, so scientists have an understanding of how the human body reacts to it.
The genes that were removed were for three pig proteins that could trigger the human immune system. A gene for a pig growth hormone receptor was also removed. A total of six human genes were added to make the kidney more compatible with the human body.
Although Looney had a high concentration of antibodies that could have attacked a human kidney, tests indicated that her antibody levels against the pig kidney were relatively low. Transplant rejection occurs when the patient’s immune system attacks the transplanted organ.
It is more likely to happen in pig-to-human transplants than human-to-human ones, but that doesn’t mean the organ will be lost.
Doctors just have to be quick about getting the reaction under control by applying strong drugs to suppress the immune system.
For the next three months, Looney will stay near NYU Langone’s facility so doctors can keep a close eye on any issues that might arise.
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