A 53-year-old Alabama woman passed a major milestone this week, becoming the longest-lived recipient of a pig organ transplant—living with her new kidney for 61 days. “I’m superwoman,” Tawana Looney told The Associated Press, laughing about leading family members on long walks around New York City as she recovers. “It’s a new take on life.”

Lonnie’s pursuit of recovery is a morale boost, according to doctors Animal-to-human transplants a realityIn the past, only four others have received highly experimental transplants of gene-edited pig organs, two hearts and two kidneys. However, none lived for more than two months.

“If you saw him on the street, you wouldn’t know he was the only person in the world walking around with a pig organ inside them,” says Dr. said Robert Montgomery, who led Lonnie’s transplant.

Dr. According to Montgomery, Lonnie’s kidneys are functioning normally. Doctors hope she can now move from New York back to Gadsden, Alabama, where she is temporarily staying for post-transplant checkups, within a month. “We’re quite optimistic that it’s going to continue to work and work well for, you know, a significant period of time,” he said.

Pig organs are being transplanted due to shortage of human organs

scientists are now genetically altering pig organs To make them more human-like and address Critical shortage of transplantable human organsExperts say more than 1,00,000 people are on the transplant list – most of whom need a kidney.

The Food and Drug Administration allows animal organ transplantation only for compassionate use cases, with only those other options available under special circumstances.

Also known as xenotransplantation, what some hospitals did and didn’t do. Experts say that a formal study on this is expected to begin sometime this year. United Therapeutics, which supplied Lonnie’s kidneys, recently asked the FDA for permission to begin the trial.

Why Lonnie was given a transplanted kidney,

Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999, but some pregnancy complications later caused high blood pressure that damaged her remaining kidney. It ultimately failed – something doctors say is rare among living donors. She spent eight years on dialysis, before doctors concluded she would never receive a donated organ—she developed super-high levels of antibodies unusually primed to attack another human kidney.

So then, Lonnie asked for the pig experiment. No one knew how it would work in someone highly sensitive to those overactive antibodies.

Just 11 days after his surgery last November, Montgomery’s team has closely tracked Looney’s recovery through blood tests and other measurements. About three weeks after the transplant, they caught subtle signs that rejection was starting — ones they learned about thanks to a 2023 experiment when a pig kidney functioned for 61 days inside a dead person whose kidney had been transplanted. The body was donated for research.

Dr. Montgomery said he successfully treated Looney and has been there no sign of rejection Since – and a few weeks ago she also met the family behind the investigation of that dead body.

Dr. According to Montgomery, there is no way to predict how long Lonnie’s new kidney will work, but if it fails, she may receive dialysis again. “The truth is we don’t know what the next obstacles are because this is the first time we’ve overcome it,” Montgomery said. “We have to continue to keep a close eye on that.”

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