Doctors Break the Interspecies Barrier to Save Lives

Transplanting animal hearts and kidneys into humans could end the dire shortage of donor organs. But researchers must still prove they can defeat the specter of long-term rejection.

By Elizabeth Svoboda
Dec 3, 2023 2:00 PMDec 4, 2023 5:48 PM
shutterstock 1851345019
In late 2020, the U.S. FDA greenlit a genetically altered pig as an allergy-safe source of food, drugs and organ transplants. (Credit: CHIRATH PHOTO/Shutterstock.)

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news
 

This story was originally published in our Jul/Aug 2023 issue as "Breaking the Interspecies Barrier." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.


On a warm fall day in 2021, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) surgeon Jayme Locke peered into a sliced-open abdomen and braced for the task ahead of her: transplanting two pig kidneys into a brain-dead human recipient for the first time in history. Locke had done experimental surgeries before, even putting pig kidneys into baboons. But this new procedure danced closer to the edge of the surreal, and unknowns leapt out at her.

She had no idea, for example, if the porcine organs would survive the rigors of stronger human blood flow. And though the pig kidneys had been genetically tweaked for cross-species compatibility, she feared the recipient’s body might still reject them. Setting her doubts aside for the moment, Locke stitched one pig kidney’s main vessels to the patient. She removed the steel clamps that pinched the human vessels shut. Then she and the rest of the operating team waited. “We were almost in suspended animation,” she recalls. “We all were just standing there, hoping the kidney was going to turn beautiful and pink.”

As human blood thrummed through the new organ, its color ripened from blue-gray to mauve and then to bright coral — the first sign the kidney was settling in as it should. Twenty-three minutes after Locke removed the vessel clamps, human urine began to flow from the pig kidney into its ureter, the tube that shunts urine from the kidney to the bladder.

0 free articles left
Want More? Get unlimited access for as low as $1.99/month

Already a subscriber?

Register or Log In

0 free articlesSubscribe
Discover Magazine Logo
Want more?

Keep reading for as low as $1.99!

Subscribe

Already a subscriber?

Register or Log In

Stay Curious

Sign up for our weekly newsletter and unlock one more article for free.

 

View our Privacy Policy


Want more?
Keep reading for as low as $1.99!


Log In or Register

Already a subscriber?
Find my Subscription

More From Discover
Recommendations From Our Store
Shop Now
Stay Curious
Join
Our List

Sign up for our weekly science updates.

 
Subscribe
To The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Copyright © 2024 Kalmbach Media Co.