Richard ‘Rick’ Slayman, the first human to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically edited pig has died, nearly two months after the surgery.
According to his family and the hospital where the operation took place, Slayman had the transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in March at the age of 62.
The surgeons believed that the pig kidney would last for at least two years.
Announcing the development on Sunday, May 12, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), United States, said there was no indication his death was a result of the transplant.
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On March 16, surgeons at the hospital transplanted a pig’s kidney into 62-year-old Richard Slayman, a living human recipient, for the first time.
The hospital affirmed that a genetically edited pig kidney was used for the “successful” surgery, which took four hours.
He was on dialysis for many years before receiving a kidney transplant from a deceased human donor in December 2018 from the hospital.
The kidney began to fail about five years later and Slayman was forced to resume dialysis in May 2023.
The hospital said the kidney was provided by eGenesis, a pharmaceutical company, based in Cambridge, from a pig donor genetically-edited using CRISPR-Cas9 technology.
The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement it was deeply saddened by Slayman’s passing and offered condolences to his family. They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.
[TheCable]
