William Brangham:
The patient here is a 62-year-old Black man whose kidneys were failing, and he was on dialysis for years. This kind of human-to-animal transplant, known as xenotransplantation, is one that researchers hope to do more of because there aren’t nearly enough human organs for the thousands of people in need.
But putting animal tissue into a human body is complicated. The body often rejects foreign tissue. So, in this case, scientists removed several genes from the pig that can trigger that rejection.
To help us understand this brave new world, we are joined by Dr. Leonardo Riella. He’s the medical director for kidney transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, where this historic event took place.
Dr. Riella, so good to have you on the program. Congratulations on this historic successful first.
I take it is still successful, right? The patient is doing well?
Source: www.pbs.org
