Chinese Man Survives Over 170 Days After Groundbreaking Pig Liver Transplant

A terminally ill Chinese man survived for more than 170 days after a genetically engineered pig liver was implanted in his body, doctors said. It's the longest surviving period ever documented for a human patient receiving pig liver, they added.

The patient, a 71-year-old man from Anhui province, was afflicted with cirrhosis and severe liver disease related to hepatitis B, diseases for which there was no effective standard treatment. As a final resort, he was given the transplant of a genetically engineered pig liver, CNN reported.

The medical team claimed that the pig liver initially produced bile and carried out vital metabolic functions in the patient's body. However, the graft was removed on day 38 due to xenotransplantation-related thrombotic microangiopathy (xTMA), a condition associated with transplant complications. The man lived for around 171 days after the transplant was removed, with medical assistance, before dying from internal haemorrhage.

Dr Beicheng Sun from Anhui Medical University served as the team leader for the implant. According to the doctors' report, the extended survival, even after the graft was removed, shows the potential for partial compatibility as well as the difficulties that still exist.

"Everyone always says liver is too complicated to transplant, compared to the heart or kidney, but after this, in the future, I think people will think differently," Dr Beicheng Sun told CNN.

Long viewed as a solution to the human organ scarcity, xenotransplantation-the transplantation of organs from one species to another-faces significant scientific challenges.

Pig hearts, kidneys, and other organs have been transplanted into humans or large animals in the past, with varying degrees of success. Since the liver plays so many metabolic, synthetic, and detoxifying functions, it is one of the most difficult organs to replicate.

"I think liver is good if we can get enough human genes in the pig," Dr Sun added.

The experiment demonstrated both "a cause for cautious optimism" and a "reminder of how far the field must still travel," according to Dr Heiner Wedemeyer, a Gastroenterology and Hepatology professor at Hannover Medical School in Germany.

"It's really groundbreaking," Wedemeyer told CNN. "For me, as a transplant hepatologist, it really offers completely new views and ideas."

According to the Reading Chronicle, pigs are the most promising donor animals because of their size, resemblance to human organs, and the availability of pig gene-editing technologies. Several recent studies have demonstrated the potential of gene-editing technologies and novel immune-suppressive strategies.

David Bennett became the first person in history to receive a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig. The 57-year-old died two months following the 2022 procedure, which was performed at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in the United States.

Last year, Richard Slayman, then 62, received a transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital. The first person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig died over two months after the procedure.