World’s only man with functioning pig organ thrives after record 2 months – Fremont Tribune

“I’m a superwoman,” Touna Looney told The Associated Press, laughing about outrunning family members on long walks around New York as she continues to recover. “It’s a new take on life.”

Looney’s live recovery is a moral boost in the quest to make animal-to-human transplantation a reality. Only four other Americans have received highly experimental transplants of gene-edited pig organs—two hearts and two kidneys—and none have lived more than two months.

“If you saw her on the street, you’d have no idea that she’s the only person in the world walking around with a functioning pig organ inside them,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery of Nyu Langone Health, who oversaw Looney’s transplant. .

Montgomery called Looney’s kidney function “absolutely normal.” Doctors hope she can leave New York — where she is temporarily living for post-transplant checkups — for her home in Alabama, Alabama, in about another month.

“We’re pretty optimistic that this will continue to work and work well, you know, for a significant period of time,” he said.

Scientists are genetically altering pigs so that their organs are more human-like to deal with a severe shortage of transplantable human organs. More than 100,000 people are on the US transplant list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting.

Until now, pig organ transplants have been cases of “compassionate use,” experiments that the Food and Drug Administration allows only under special circumstances for people without other options.

A handful of hospitals trying them are sharing what worked and what didn’t in preparation for the world’s first formal xenotransplantation trials, expected to begin sometime this year. United Therapeutics, which supplied Looney’s kidneys, recently asked the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin a trial.

How Looney Fares is “a very valuable experience,” said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, who last year led the world’s first kidney transplant and works with another pig developer, Egenesis.

Looney was far healthier than previous patients, Kawai noted, so her progress will help inform future trials. “We have to learn from each other,” he said.

Looney donated a kidney to his mother in 1999. Later, pregnancy complications caused high blood pressure that damaged her remaining kidney, which eventually failed, something incredibly rare among living donors. She spent eight years on dialysis before doctors concluded she would probably never receive a donated organ—she had developed super-high levels of antibodies abnormally primed to attack another human kidney.

So Looney, 53, sought out pigs for an experiment. No one knew how it would work in someone “highly sensitized” with these overactive antibodies.

Discharged just 11 days after surgery on Nov. 25, Montgomery’s team closely followed his recovery through blood tests and other measurements. About three weeks after the transplant, they picked up subtle signs that rejection was starting—signs they learned to look for thanks to a 2023 experiment in which a pig kidney worked for 61 days in a deceased man whose body had been donated for research.

Montgomery said they successfully treated Looney and there has been no sign of rejection since then—and a few weeks ago, she met with the family behind this autopsy.

“It feels really good to know that the decision I made for NYU to use my brother was the right decision and it’s helping people,” said Mary Miller-Duffy of Newburgh, New York.

Looney, in turn, tries to help others, serving as what Montgomery calls an ambassador for people who have reached out to her via social media, sharing their anguish over long waits for transplants and wondering about pig kidneys.

One, she said, was being considered for a xenotransplant at another hospital, but was scared away, wondering whether to proceed.

“I didn’t want to convince him to do it or not to do it,” Lowney said. Instead, she asked if he was religious and called him to prayer to “get off your faith, what your heart tells you.”

“I like to talk to people, I like to help people,” she added. “I want to be, like, some educational piece” for scientists to help others.

There’s no way to predict how long Looney’s new kidney will work, but if it fails, she could end up on dialysis again.

“The truth is, we don’t really know what the next hurdles are because this is the first time we’ve come this far,” Montgomery said. “We’re going to have to continue to really follow her closely.”