Monkey survives for two years after pig kidney transplant
Why is this important?
Around 5,000 people in the UK are waiting for a kidney transplant at any time, yet only around 3,600 transplants are carried out each year. The average wait for a deceased donor kidney transplant in the UK is 2-3 years (NHS Blood and Transplant data).
In a recent study in Nature (Anand, 2023), a monkey received a kidney from a genetically engineered miniature pig and lived for more than two years after the transplant.
Macaque monkey
What did the study show?
Twenty-one macaque monkeys were given organs from genetically modified Yucatan miniature pigs. Th team made 69 genetic modifications to stop the kidneys being rejected and to prolong survival.
These included eliminating pig viruses and taking away antigen coding genes that the human immune system attacks, causing the organ to be rejected.
The monkeys survived for a median of six months, with at least two out of 15 monkeys bearing the desired edits living for more than two years.
Prior to the study, xenografts usually survived in nonhuman primates for around three months or less. The new data could help convince regulators that xenotransplantation is ready for clinical trials in humans.
“The global burden of (chronic) kidney disease is staggering,” says Mike Curtis, CEO of eGenesis. “Cross species transplantation offers the most sustainable, scalable, and feasible approach for delivering new sources of organs.”
How does this affect you?
The work, funded by biotechnology company eGenesis, is the latest in a string of efforts seeking to use other species to address global organ shortages. Such an editing strategy could one day make it more likely for people’s bodies to accept organs from different species. So, if you are waiting for a kidney transplant in the UK, the wait may come down when this types of research comes to fruition.
Last Reviewed on 11 November 2023