Surgeons in the United States have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in to a 57-year-old man, a medical first that could one day help solve the chronic shortage of organ donations.
According to a statement from the University of Maryland Medical School, on Monday, January 10, 2021, the “historic” procedure took place on Friday, January 7, 2021.
The patient, David Bennett, who had been deemed ineligible for human transplant — a decision that is often taken when the recipient has very poor underlying health is now recovering and being carefully monitored to determine how the new organ performs.
While the patient’s prognosis is far from certain, it represents a major milestone for animal-to-human transplantation.
The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the surgery on New Year’s Eve, as a last-ditch effort for a patient who was unsuitable for a conventional transplant.
“This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis,” said Bartley Griffith, who surgically transplanted the pig heart.
The donor pig belonged to a herd that had undergone genetic editing procedures with three genes that would have led to the rejection of pig organs by humans “knocked out,” and six human genes responsible for human acceptance inserted.
