The Guardian. A genetically modified kidney from a pig called Wilma has kept a 66-year-old man with kidney failure alive for a record nine months and successfully acted as a “bridge” to a human transplant in a world first.
Tim Andrews was seriously ill with end-stage kidney disease caused by type 2 diabetes and had only a 9% chance of receiving a human kidney within five years, against a more than 40% risk of dying or being removed from the waiting list.
Kidney transplantation provides the best survival and quality of life for patients with end-stage kidney disease, but global demand for human organs far exceeds supply.
Surgeons in the US successfully transplanted a kidney from Wilma, a Yucatan miniature pig, into Andrews, after genetically engineering it to be compatible with his immune system.
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The kidney kept Andrews free of dialysis for a record nine months, the longest period ever recorded, before it began failing and he received one from a dead human donor. It was also the first time a pig’s kidney had been used as a temporary “bridge” to a human transplant.
Details of the breakthrough, which offers hope to millions of people whose kidneys have failed, were published in the Lancet medical journal.
Transplanting genetically engineered pig organs has long been proposed as a solution to the organ shortage. But the first pig kidney transplant into a living person, in 2024, ended after 52 days when the patient died from unrelated heart problems, and no previous studies had documented xenograft survival beyond two months, according to the Lancet.
Before the transplant in January 2025, Wilma the pig had received 69 edits to her genome. Some of these were designed to dodge viruses that might pose a risk to humans, while others made the organ more compatible with humans, reducing the odds of immune rejection.
The team behind the transplant at Mass General Brigham, a non-profit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, said Andrews successfully lived with the genetically edited kidney for 271 days before receiving a human kidney from a donor.
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