Gene-Edited Pig Kidney Gives Living Donor New Lease on Life

An Alabama woman is free from dialysis and in better health after surgeons at NYU Langone Health performed a gene-edited pig kidney transplant last month. The procedure marks the latest promising breakthrough in an emerging surgical practice posited as the solution to the organ supply crisis.

Towana Looney, 53, donated a kidney to her mother in 1999 but developed kidney failure several years later after a complication during pregnancy caused damaging high blood pressure. Less than 1 percent of living donors develop kidney failure, but those who do need a transplant are given higher priority on the waiting list. By December 2016, she needed to start dialysis treatment to remove excess fluid and waste from her blood stream. She was listed for kidney transplantation in early 2017, but it proved nearly impossible to find a suitable match: the unusually high levels of harmful antibodies in her blood made a devastating form of transplant rejection likely. She remained on the transplant waiting list for nearly eight years while slowly losing accessible blood vessels to support dialysis.