A woman in Alabama is recovering after receiving a gene-edited pig kidney in a breakthrough surgery.
Towana Looney, 53, developed kidney failure years after donating one of her original kidneys to her mother. She began eight years of dialysis treatments and went on the waiting list for a donor kidney, but the antibodies in her bloodstream made a traditional kidney transplant riskier than usual: Doctors were worried her body might reject a donated organ.
Because she had so few options for addressing a life-threatening condition, Looney was eligible for special FDA approval of an otherwise unproven transplant procedure. The expanded access program, sometimes called compassionate use, allows doctors to use experimental therapies that have not yet received clinical trials.
In this case, the therapy was the transplant of a pig kidney with certain genes edited to make it more compatible with human immune systems.
Looney's procedure is only the third time a human has received an edited pig kidney, and she is the only living person with a pig organ transplant.
“I feel like I’ve been given another chance at life. I cannot wait to be able to travel again and spend more quality time with my family and grandchildren," Looney said.
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Doctors performed the first xenotransplantion, or the use of animal organs in human transplant procedures, in 2021. NYU Langone Health has now performed seven such procedures, many of them in deceased or brain-dead recipients. The surgeries represent some of the earliest stages of research into animal transplants for humans.
“Without the generosity and altruism of those who participated in our research up to this point, this next step in xenotransplantation would not have been possible,” said Dr. Montgomery. “Towana’s case is a precursor to potential clinical trials, under the FDA’s guidance, to determine if these organs are safe as a new, sustainable source of organs for those who need them.”
