Chinese doctors said on Wednesday that they have successfully transplanted a genetically modified pig liver into a brain-dead human for the first time, marking a major breakthrough in organ transplantation and raising hopes for new solutions to the global shortage of donor livers.
Pigs have emerged as the best animal organ donors, with several living patients in the US having received pig kidneys or hearts in the last few years.
Livers have proved trickier—and had not previously been tested inside a human body.
But with a huge and growing demand for liver donations across the world, researchers hope that gene-edited pigs can offer at least temporary relief to seriously ill patients on long waiting lists.
Doctors at the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an, China, announced the field’s latest breakthrough in a study published in the journal Nature.
A liver from a miniature pig, which had six edited genes to make it a better donor, was transplanted into a brain-dead adult at the hospital on 10 March 2024, according to the study.
