For the first time, researchers have transplanted a genetically modified pork on a person. The lungs worked in the brain -dead patient after the transplant and was not immediately repelled by his body. After 24 hours, however, a pulmonary edema and the third and sixth day the immune system attacked the foreign organ. At the request of the relatives of the body donor, the researchers ended the experiment after nine days. The feasibility study shows that the transplantation of a pork’s powder on a person that has so far been particularly difficult is possible. At the same time, it also illustrates important challenges.
In Germany alone, more than 8,000 people are waiting for a donor organ. However, demand far exceeds the offer worldwide. So -called xeno transplants could offer a solution, i.e. organ transplantation from animals on humans. For this purpose, the donor animal is mostly genetically modified so that the organ is not recognized as strange and rejected by the human immune system. Individual patients have already survived with such a pig heart for a few weeks; Clinical studies have already been approved in the United States for the transplant of pigs.
For other organs, the path to successful clinical use is still significantly further. The lungs in particular have so far been particularly difficult to transplant. Because it is not only anatomically particularly complex, but is also in permanent contact with the outside world, which increases the risk of infection. Initial experiences for the Xeno-Latz Transplantation come from animal experiments in which monkeys received pigs. “The survival times in such experiments are a few hours up to a maximum of about one week,” says the doctor Joachim Denner, who is not involved in the current study, head of the Virus Safety working group of the Xeno Transplantation at the Free University of Berlin.
Nine days functional
A team led by Jianxing He from the National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Diseases in Guangzhou in China has now successfully transplanted a pork on a person. In the pig, six genetic changes were previously made to reduce rejection reactions. A 39-year-old man served as a test subject who had suffered a bleeding bleeding 16 days earlier and was declared brain dead. His body was made available with the consent of the relatives of research and kept kept on life for this purpose.
“During the 216-hour surveillance period, the lung-xenotransplante remained viable and functional, without signs of hyperacute rejection or infection,” reports the research team. However, heavy lung edema occurred after 24 hours. Although the patient received immunosuppressive medication, the third and sixth day after the transplant showed signs of a rejection reaction. In the following days, however, these partially stopped until the researchers ended the attempt on the ninth day at the request of the relatives.
Further challenges
From Konrad Fischer’s point of view, head of the Xeno Transplantation section at the Technical University of Munich, the study means an important step for transplant medicine. “The result shows that an xenogenic lung transplantation is technically possible and that essential immunological barriers can be overcome,” says the researcher, which is not involved in the study. “Especially for people with the most serious lung diseases, who often wait for a donor organ for years or never get one, this attempt awakens new hopes.”
However, further preclinical studies are required until the first attempts at living people are conceivable. An open question is, for example, how the observed rejection reaction came about. One possibility would be inadequate immunosuppression. Because, as He and his team describe in their publication, they had not blocked the so-called CD40/CD40L signal path of the immune system-according to Fischer, a standard actually in many immunosuppression protocols. It would also be possible that the changes in the recipient’s body caused by brain death caused the functional disorders of the transplanted lungs.
“Our study underlines the progress that have been achieved in genetic changes and immunosuppressive strategies, but also illustrates important challenges that have to be mastered for clinical implementation,” write HE and his colleagues.
Source: Jianxing He (National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China) et al., Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/S41591-025-03861-X
