A 53-year-old grandmother from Alabama, Towana Looney, is making remarkable progress after receiving a gene-edited pig kidney transplant in November. This groundbreaking surgery offers hope in addressing the critical organ shortage.
A grandmother from Alabama is doing well after receiving a gene-edited pig organ during a transplant surgery in November. Looney, whose eight years of dialysis is now over, is doing better than other recipients who died two months after receiving a pig kidney or heart: “It’s a blessing. I feel like I’ve been given another chance at life.
I cannot wait to be able to travel again and spend more quality time with my family and grandchildren,” LooneyThe lead physician on the team for Looney’s case was Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health. The surgery is a “promising breakthrough” in the face of an organ supply crisis, the news release continued: 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. Eventually, “Looney was authorized to receive a pig kidney with 10 gene edits under the Food and Drug Administration’s expanded access program, otherwise known as compassionate use,” the press release said, adding the procedure is known as Xenotransplantation. “Looney’s procedure marks the third time that a kidney from a gene-edited pig has been transplanted into a living huma
Xenotransplantation Organ Transplant Gene Editing Pig Kidney Alabama
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Alabama Grandmother Thrives After Receiving Gene-Edited Pig Kidney TransplantA 53-year-old grandmother from Alabama is making a remarkable recovery after receiving a groundbreaking gene-edited pig kidney transplant in November. Towana Looney, who had been on dialysis for eight years, is experiencing improved health and vitality compared to previous recipients of pig organs who only lived for two months. This surgery represents a significant advancement in addressing the critical shortage of organ donors.
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