Man discharged from hospital after receiving groundbreaking pig kidney transplant

health

by alexandra klausner

Effectively transplanting organs from animals to humans may sound like something that could happen when pigs fly.

But Rick Suleiman, 62, returned home from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on Wednesday, two weeks after a successful organ transplant with a genetically engineered pig kidney, according to a hospital press release. The newspaper has contacted Mas General for comment.

Organ transplants from pigs have failed in the past, and this is the first kidney transplant of its kind to a living recipient. Doctors are hailing this as a historic milestone in xenotransplantation, the transplantation of animal organs into humans.

“Today, this moment of being able to leave the hospital in the best state of health I have had in a long time, is the moment I have wanted to come for years. It is one of my happiest moments,” Suleiman said in a statement.

He thanked the hospital staff for their kind treatment.

“The care I received was exceptional and I trust the doctors at the Massachusetts General Brigham Health System with my life. , I'm excited to be able to spend time with my friends and loved ones again.”

Doctors transplanted a kidney into Suleiman on March 16. Immediately after the four-hour surgery, his new kidneys began producing urine.

Currently, Suleiman's kidneys are functioning and he is not undergoing dialysis.

This will be Suleiman's second kidney transplant. Ms. Suleiman, who had suffered from type 2 diabetes for many years, received a kidney transplant from a human donor in 2018 after she was on dialysis for seven years.

Five years later, the man's kidneys failed and he had to undergo dialysis again. After being hospitalized about every two weeks due to complications from dialysis, he volunteered to have a pig kidney transplanted.

“I saw it as a way not only to help me, but also to give hope to the thousands of people who need transplants to survive,” Suleiman said in a statement.

There is a global organ shortage, and doctors believe Suleiman's surgery could pave the way for more similar organ donations. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, 17 people die every day while waiting for an organ transplant.

Pig kidneys are genetically modified using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which removes some of the pig's genes and replaces them with human genes to increase fitness. The kidney was donated by Massachusetts-based biotechnology company eGenesis.

The news comes after a pig kidney was transplanted into a brain-dead man named Maurice “Mo” Miller at New York University Langone last year.

The organ worked for two months.