Three weeks ago, Sulaiman, a sixty-year-old man, and the medical team at Mass General Hospital (Boston) made history, after receiving a genetically modified pig kidney, then leaving the hospital unharmed, despite all the health risks surrounding the operation.
Dr. Leo Riella, Medical Director of Kidney Transplantation at the Transplant Center at Mass General Hospital, commented, “We will learn a lot from Sulaiman. He was brave to undergo a procedure that had many unknowns.” CNN.
Sulaiman did not have many options, so he decided to take a risk and engage in this experiment, and to be the first person in the world to receive a genetically modified pig kidney to suit the human body. Accordingly, the American Sulaiman became the first person with a pig kidney.
But the transplantation process was not as simple as a person could imagine. Dr. Riella asserts that “the success of this transplantation process is the culmination of the efforts of thousands of scientists and doctors over several decades.”
The surgery took about 4 hours. Although Sulaiman’s body rejected the kidney for a short time, he later accepted the kidney, and he is in good health. This surgery represents a major shift in the quest to provide organs to patients more easily.
“This moment, as I leave the hospital today in one of my best health conditions in a long time, is a moment I have wished would come for many years,” Slayman wrote in a statement. “Now, it has become a reality, and it is one of the happiest moments of my life.”
Transplanting animal organs into human bodies, called allografts, has witnessed great progress in recent years, as in September 2021, surgeons from New York University’s Langone Hospital performed the first transplant of a pig kidney into the body of a brain-dead human in the world.
In November 2023, Lawrence Fawcett, 58 years old, the second patient in the world to receive a genetically modified pig heart in his body, died six weeks after the operation.
The unprecedented transplant is a hope for about 90,000 patients undergoing dialysis. In this regard, the medical team that performed Sulaiman’s surgery is working closely with the US Food and Drug Administration to pave the way towards clinical trials.
2024-04-06 07:50:00
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