Chinese scientists announced the success of transplanting a pig liver into a human recipient this week. The xenotransplant procedure was performed by researchers from Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University on a recipient who had been confirmed to be brain dead. After a few hours of organ transplantation, blood flow and bile production were successfully detected, indicating that the organ was functioning normally.
The experiment continued for 10 days before family members requested that it be terminated. During that period, the organ was not rejected by the recipient's body and operated without any issues. The pigs from the Bama breed were used, which underwent six genetic changes to make it suitable for human use. The recipients were given immune-suppressing drugs to prevent rejection of the new liver.
The Bama breed of pig is used by scientists as a human analog because it is fast to breed, low cost, has an organ size comparable to humans, and has physiological characteristics that are also similar to humans. It is also used for medical studies of the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, renal systems, and skin as an analog of the human body.
This is the first time that a pig liver has been transplanted into a human body, with a research paper published in the journal Nature for equivalent studies. Researchers in Pennsylvania have previously successfully transplanted a pig liver into a brain-dead human recipient. The liver was kept outside the body throughout the experiment.
Human kidneys and hearts have been successfully transplanted into humans. In the United States, a woman became the world's longest-living recipient of a pig kidney earlier this year. The pig heart recipient died months after the procedure due to an undetected swine virus infection. In addition to using pig organs as replacements, a replacement heart has also been created using human stem cells and a pig heart skeleton in 2022.