On a recent Thursday afternoon, researchers Lanuza Faccioli and Zhiping Hu wheeled an inconspicuous black and white plastic cooler from an operating room at a hospital in downtown Pittsburgh. Inside was a badly scarred liver, just removed from a 47-year-old man undergoing a transplant to receive a new one from …
Read More »The First Person to Receive a Pig Kidney Transplant Has Died
Richard “Rick” Slayman, the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died almost two months after the transplant. He was 62. The historic procedure was carried out on March 16 at Massachusetts General Hospital. In a statement released on May 11, the hospital said it …
Read More »He Got a Pig Kidney Transplant. Now Doctors Need to Keep It Working
Richard Slayman made history on March 16 by becoming the first living person to receive a genetically edited pig kidney. This week, the 62-year-old Massachusetts resident reached another milestone by being discharged from the hospital after his groundbreaking procedure. Now comes the hard part: making sure his transplanted organ keeps …
Read More »This Bag of Cells Could Grow New Livers Inside of People
For the first time, scientists are attempting to grow a new, miniature liver inside of a person. It sounds like science fiction; in fact, the idea was the plot of a Grey’s Anatomy episode that aired in 2018. Now, biotech company LyGenesis is trying to turn the concept into reality. …
Read More »A Gene-Edited Pig Kidney Was Just Transplanted Into a Person for the First Time
In a world first, surgeons in Boston have transplanted a genetically altered pig kidney into a 62-year-old man. The procedure is a step toward providing more readily available organs to patients who are in desperate need of a transplant. The four-hour surgery was carried out on March 16 at Massachusetts …
Read More »A Gene-Edited Pig Liver Was Attached to a Person—and Worked for 3 Days
Surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania announced today that they successfully attached a genetically altered pig liver to a brain-dead person and found that the organ functioned normally for 72 hours. The experiment represents a step toward using pig organs to help extremely ill patients with failing livers. The researchers …
Read More »The Second Person to Get a Pig Heart Transplant Just Died
Lawrence Faucette, the 58-year-old patient with terminal heart disease who was the second person to receive a genetically engineered pig heart, died on October 30, according to a statement from the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where the transplant was performed. Faucette received the transplant on September 20 …
Read More »A Monkey Got a New Kidney From a Pig—and Lived for 2 Years
Around the world, there aren’t enough donor kidneys available for everyone who needs one. Scientists are hoping pig kidneys could help ease the shortage, but first they must make sure the organs can keep working after transplant. In a step toward that goal, Massachusetts-based biotech company eGenesis reports today that …
Read More »Another Person Just Got a Pig Heart. Scientists Have a Plan to Make It Last
A 58-year-old man has become the second person ever to receive a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig. The patient, Lawrence Faucette, was facing near death from heart failure and wasn’t eligible for a traditional transplant with a human organ. So surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center …
Read More »Scientists Just Tried Growing Human Kidneys in Pigs
In a first, researchers in China have used pigs to grow early-stage kidneys made up of mostly human cells. The advance is a step closer to producing organs in animals that could one day be transplanted to people. More than 100,000 people in the United States are on the national …
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