After a few months

Pig kidney: first patient with transplant dead

This pig kidney had been implanted in the patient.(Bild: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Great sadness in the USA: after high hopes, the first patient to receive a pig kidney transplant has now died unexpectedly.

Rick Slayman was the first person in the world to receive a genetically modified pig kidney in a four-hour operation. The 62-year-old dialysis patient suffered from advanced kidney disease. He had received a human donor kidney in 2018, but it failed last year.

The Massachusetts General hospital in Boston, USA, announced on Saturday evening that the staff were deeply shocked by the sudden death of Rick Slayman. There were no indications that his death was related to the transplant at the end of March. The hospital did not provide any information on the cause of death.

"Beacon of hope"
"Mr. Slayman will always be seen as a beacon of hope for countless transplant patients worldwide. We are deeply grateful for his trust and willingness to advance the field of xenotransplantation," the hospital wrote in its statement.

There is aworldwide shortage of human donor organs
Due to the shortage of human donor organs, medical research is increasingly turning to organs from animals. This branch of research is known as xenotransplantation, which generally refers to the transplantation of organs from one species to another. In the case of Slayman's pig kidney, a biotechnology laboratory removed pig genes that could be harmful to humans and added certain human genes before the transplant.

The shortage of donor organs is a worldwide problem. According to the clinic, there are more than 1,400 people on the waiting list for a kidney transplant at MGH alone, and almost 90,000 nationwide. Doctors in the USA have also transplanted genetically modified pig hearts into two patients for the first time in the world since 2022. However, both patients died within two months of the operation.