← brief for 2026-09-03 · Transplant & xeno

Porcine kidney xenotransplantation as a bridge to allotransplantation: a first-in-human study.

Key takeaways

A person with kidney failure faced a long wait for a human donor kidney, so doctors transplanted a pig kidney first, then later gave them a human kidney. The report follows what happened through both transplants. The researchers looked at three worries: how long the pig kidney kept working, whether an animal virus could pass to the person, and whether the immune system's reaction to the pig organ would make the later human transplant harder. This is one patient, not a trial, so it shows the approach is possible but cannot tell us how often it works.

Who did this work

Riella LV · Borges TJ · Rosales IA · Avillach CT · Palsson R · Hullekes F · Verhoeff R · Pomahac A · Chen JY · Santagata S · Giarraputo A · Smith RN

Source

Article · PubMed, xeno · 2026 Sep 3
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42692038/