WASHINGTON – A woman who received a pig kidney transplant is back on dialysis because surgeons had to remove the gradually failing organ after just 47 days.
Lisa Pisano was the second person to receive a gene-edited kidney from a pig, and NYU Langone Health announced that she is stable following an operation to remove the organ earlier this week.
The first patient to receive a pig kidney transplant, Richard “Rick” Slayman of Massachusetts General Hospital, died in early May, nearly two months after the transplant. Doctors said there was no indication he died as a result of the experimental transplant.
Pisano’s heart and kidneys were failing when, in two dramatic surgeries in April, doctors implanted a mechanical pump to keep her heart beating and then the pig’s kidney.
At first she seemed to be recovering well. But Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the transplant, said there were “unique challenges” in managing both the heart pump and the new kidney. Her blood pressure dropped too low several times for optimal blood flow to the kidney.
The kidney lost function until doctors could justify keeping her on immunosuppressant medications, Montgomery said in a statement Friday.
A recent kidney biopsy showed no signs of rejection — the biggest concern in highly experimental animal-to-human transplants — but there was “significant injury” due to insufficient blood flow, he said. NYU will study the explanted kidney in more detail to gain more information about how it reacted inside a living person.
Montgomery noted that Pisano was not a candidate for the life-extending heart pump during dialysis, and his heart disease in turn precluded a traditional kidney transplant.
“We hope to get Lisa back to her family soon,” he said. “Her strength and courage in the face of adversity inspires and drives us as we continue to pursue the hope and promise of xenotransplantation.”
Pisano told the Associated Press in April that he knew the pig kidney might not work, but “I just took a chance. And you know, worst case scenario, if it didn’t work for me, it could have worked for someone else.”
More than 100,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the US, most need a kidney, and thousands die waiting. Hoping to fill the shortage of donated organs, several biotechnology companies are genetically modifying pigs so that their organs look more human and are less likely to be destroyed by people’s immune systems.
Formal studies of such bodies are expected to begin next year. Meanwhile, NYU and other research teams have temporarily transplanted pig kidneys and hearts into brain-dead bodies, with promising results. In addition to Mass General’s pig kidney transplant, the University of Maryland transplanted pig hearts into two men who had no other options, and both died within months.
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