With her new kidney, an Alabama woman has been healthy and energetic for 61 days and counting, marking a significant milestone as the longest-living recipient of a pig organ transplant.
As she continues her recuperation, Towana Looney told The Associated Press, “I’m superwoman,” chuckling about outperforming family members on lengthy hikes throughout New York City. It’s a fresh perspective on life.
The fight to make animal-to-human transplants a reality is boosted by Looney’s full recovery. Only four other Americans—two hearts and two kidneys—have had extremely risky gene-edited pig organ transplants, and none of them have survived for longer than two months.
According to Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who oversaw Looney’s transplant, if you saw her on the street, you wouldn’t know that she is the only person in the world going around with a functioning pig organ inside of them.
Looney’s kidney function was described by Montgomery as completely normal. In around another month, doctors anticipate that she will be able to leave New York, where she is currently staying temporarily, for post-transplant examinations for her home in Gadsden, Alabama.
“We are very hopeful that this will continue to function and perform well for a considerable amount of time,” he said.
To solve the acute lack of transplantable human organs, scientists are genetically modifying pigs to produce more human-like organs. The majority of the 100,000 or more individuals on the U.S. transplant list require a kidney, and thousands of them pass away as they wait.
Up until now, pig organ transplants have only been used as compassionate instances; the FDA only permits these experiments when individuals have no other choice.
Additionally, in anticipation of the world’s first formal xenotransplantation trials, which are anticipated to start this year, the few hospitals that have tried them are exchanging information about what worked and what didn’t. The company that provided Looney’s kidney, United Therapeutics, recently requested approval from the Food and Drug Administration to start a trial.
According to Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, who oversaw the first kidney transplant in history last year and collaborates with eGenesis, another pig developer, how Looney does is a really valuable experience.
Kawai pointed out that Looney’s progress will assist guide future efforts because she was much healthier than the previous patients. He stated that we must all learn from one another.
In 1999, Looney gave her mother a kidney. Her remaining kidney finally failed due to high blood pressure brought on by later pregnancy difficulties, which is extremely uncommon among living donors. Before physicians determined that she would probably never get a donated organ, she spent eight years on dialysis because she had generated extremely high levels of antibodies that were abnormally poised to attack another human kidney.
Thus, 53-year-old Looney looked for the pig experiment. Nobody knew how it would function in a person who had those overactive antibodies and was extremely sensitive.
Montgomery’s team has continuously monitored her recuperation through blood tests and other metrics since she was released just 11 days following the surgery on November 25. A 2023 experiment in which a pig kidney functioned for 61 days inside a deceased man whose body was donated for research taught them to watch for minor indications of rejection, which scientists discovered about three weeks after the transplant.
Montgomery stated that Looney was successfully treated and that she has not shown any signs of rejection since. A few weeks ago, she also had the opportunity to meet the family that conducted the deceased-body research.
Mary Miller-Duffy of Newburgh, New York, said, “It feels really good to know that the decision I made for NYU to use my brother was the right decision and it’s helping people.”
In turn, Looney is attempting to assist others by acting as what Montgomery refers to as an advocate for those who have been contacting her on social media to express their anguish over the protracted transplant waiting list and their concerns over pig kidneys.
According to her, one was being evaluated for a xenotransplant at a different facility but was afraid and unsure about whether to move forward.
“I didn’t want to convince him to do it or not,” Looney stated. Rather, she inquired about his religious beliefs and encouraged him to pray and follow his intuition.
She went on to say, “I love helping people and I love talking to people.” In order to assist others, I would like to be some sort of instructional resource for scientists.
Although it is impossible to estimate how long Looney’s new kidney will last, she could resume dialysis if it fails.
Since this is the first time we’ve come this far, the truth is that we don’t really know what the next obstacles are, Montgomery added. We will need to continue to monitor her closely.