“it’s an extremely important date”, assures a transplant specialist

The experiment had already been tried on brain dead patients, but medicine has just reached a milestone. A team of doctors from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced on Thursday, March 21, the success of a genetically modified pig kidney transplant into a human. The patient is a 62-year-old man, he is doing well and his humanitarian system does not seem to reject the transplant. “It’s a symbolic date,” recognizes Professor Olivier Bastien, transplant expert, former director of the organ and tissue harvesting and transplant activity in France at the Biomedicine Agency.

This is a xenograft, the transplantation of animal organs into humans, which dates back a week. A complex process because by default the recipient’s system tends to attack the foreign organ. “There are several stages in rejection”, explains Professor Olivier Bastien. For the American patient “we are in the phase of acute rejection, then there will be a second, more complicated stage, which will be the control of chronic rejection. Rejection at 10 or 15 years, but we are not there yet. Symbolically , it’s an extremely important date,” assures the scientist.

Hope for waiting patients

There are approximately 100,000 patients in the United States waiting for a kidney transplant, compared to 20 to 30,000 in France.“Theoretically, these patients could receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant. However, there are still steps to take. “It is a very complex biotechnology industry to implement. The United States has relaunched a research program 10 years ago. This is also the case for certain Asian countries. It is extremely important that Europe also in the race,” concludes this expert.