The world's first recipient of a genetically-modified pig kidney has passed away two months after the transplant. The 62-year-old man, Richard Slayman, had end-stage kidney disease, and underwent a four-hour-long kidney transplant on March 16, 2024, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The successful surgery gave hope to patients and doctors that xenotransplantation, which is the transplant of organs or tissues from one species to another, could be a potential solution to the global organ shortage. 


According to Massachusetts General Hospital, Slayman's family said in a statement that one of the reasons he underwent the surgery was to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive. 


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All about the xenotransplant


The genetically-edited kidney had 69 genomic edits. CRISPR-Cas9 technology was used to genetically edit the pig donor. Harmful pig genes were removed, and certain human genes added to improve the kidney's compatibility with humans. 


The researchers who genetically edited the pig also inactivated endogenous retroviruses in the animal to ensure that the recipient did not contract any infection from the donor.


A pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known as eGenesis, provided the pig kidney.


Slayman had been a patient at the Massachusetts General Transplant Center for 11 years. In a statement, he had said that his first transplanted kidney had started failing in 2023, which was when his nephrologist and the Transplant Center team suggested a pig kidney transplant.


Slayman had been living with Type 2 diabetes and hypertension for many years. He received his first kidney transplant in December 2018. For seven years prior to that, he had been on dialysis. 


Five years after his first kidney transplant, his organ had started showing signs of failure, as a result of which he resumed dialysis in May 2023. However, the dialysis could not be smoothly conducted due to vascular access complications, which severely impacted the quality of his life. 


But the pig kidney transplant saved his life. 


A single Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Expanded Access Protocol, known as compassionate use, was granted to the hospital because the patient had a life-threatening illness, and no other therapies could have saved him. This protocol is granted to people with serious, life-threatening diseases to gain access to experimental treatments or trials when no comparable treatment options exist. 


The surgeons administered novel immunosuppressant drugs such as tegoprubat and ravulizumab to Slaymab. 


The hospital said in a statement that it has so far found no indication that Slayman died due to complications arising from the transplant.


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