, which triggers immediate destruction from the human immune system. Next came three-gene “knockouts,” to remove other immune-triggering red flags. Now the company is focusing on 10 gene edits — deleted pig genes and added human ones that together lessen risk of rejection and blood clots plus limit organ size.
“With this surgery I get to see my wife smile again,” Pisano’s husband Todd said Wednesday.Other transplant experts are closely watching how the patient fares.
“I have to congratulate them,” said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Mass General, who noted that his own pig kidney patient was healthier overall going into his operation than NYU’s patient. “When the heart function is bad, it’s really difficult to do a kidney transplant.”More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant waiting list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting. In hopes of filling the shortage of donated organs, several biotech companies are genetically modifying pigs so their organs are more humanlike, less likely to be destroyed by people’s immune system.NYU and other research teams have temporarily transplanted pig kidneys and hearts
. Then the University of Maryland transplanted pig hearts into two men who were out of other options, andMass General’s pig kidney transplant last month raised new hopes. Kawai said Richard “Rick” Slayman experienced an early rejection scare but bounced back enough to go home earlier this month and still is faring well five weeks post-transplant. A recent biopsy showed no further problems.
Pisano is the first woman to receive a pig organ — and unlike with prior xenotransplant experiments, both her heart and kidneys had failed. She went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated before the experimental surgeries. She’d gotten too weak to even play with her grandchildren. “I was miserable,” the Cookstown, New Jersey, woman said.
A failed heart made her ineligible for a traditional kidney transplant. But while on dialysis, she didn’t qualify for a heart pump, called a left ventricular assist device or LVAD, either.A massive debris avalanche, with the village of Kippel in the foreground, is seen on Thursday, May 29, 2025, one day after the collapse of the Birch Glacier causing the demolishing of the village of Blatten in Switzerland. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)
A massive debris avalanche, with the village of Kippel in the foreground, is seen on Thursday, May 29, 2025, one day after the collapse of the Birch Glacier causing the demolishing of the village of Blatten in Switzerland. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)A study published Thursday in Science said that even if global temperatures stabilized at their current level, 40% of the world’s glaciers still would be lost. But if warming were limited to
) — the long-term warming limit since the late 1800s called for by the 2015 Paris climate agreement — twice as much glacier ice could be preserved than would be otherwise.Even so, many areas will become ice-free no matter what, Truffer, the University of Alaska expert.