PIG kidney transplants could be used to treat human patients as scientists have kept one working for longer than a month for the first time.
Two new Frankenstein-style experiments show the animal organs can continue “life-sustaining function” in brain-dead patients.
Top surgeons in the US have carried out successful transplants on bodies on life support – and now say it is time for trials on living patients.
A team at New York University Langone still have their body alive, with the kidney “performing optimally” after 32 days and counting.
While experts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham say theirs was the first fully functioning pair and lasted for the whole of a seven-day study.
It is hoped people with chronic kidney disease – around 7.2million Brits – could one day be saved by organs grown in animals.
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NHS patients currently wait an average of two to three years for a kidney transplant from a deceased donor, and there are more than 5,500 people on the wait list.
Dr Robert Montgomery, at NYU Langone, said: “There are simply not enough organs available for everyone who needs one.
“This work demonstrates a pig kidney, with only one genetic modification and without experimental medications or devices, can replace the function of a human kidney for at least 32 days without being rejected.”
Both patients were men in their 50s who were declared brain-dead but had their bodies kept alive for the studies.
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The pig kidneys had to be genetically modified to cut the risk of their bodies rejecting the organs, which has scuppered past attempts.
Scientists have also now managed to get transplanted kidneys processing creatinine, a waste product that must be removed from the body.
They say trials need to be done on living kidney disease patients to try and develop the treatment.
Writing in the journal Jama Surgery, Dr Jayme Locke at Alabama University said: “Future research in living human recipients is necessary.”
Surgeons are also working on using pig hearts in human patients.
Terminally ill David Bennett, 57, had the first-of-its-kind transplant in Maryland last year but died two months later.
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