Man Who Had Pig Kidney for 271 Days Gets Human One

A New Hampshire man just became the answer to a question transplant medicine has been asking for years. Tim Andrews spent nine months living with a kidney grown in a gene-edited pig, then successfully received a human kidney—the first documented case of a pig organ acting as a "bridge" to a human one, researchers report in the Lancet. His experience, and that of one other patient, suggests a pig kidney doesn't appear to make the body more likely to reject a later human organ, a key concern. The pig kidney, developed by biotech firm eGenesis and transplanted at Mass General Brigham, let Andrews quit debilitating dialysis and regain strength while he waited for a scarce human match.

Andrews, who was 66 when he had the transplant in January 2025, lived with the pig kidney for 271 days before it had to be removed due to blood clots and declining function. He returned to dialysis for 82 days before he received a kidney from a human donor in January, the BBC reports. "Right now, we don't think there's any downside of having a pig kidney followed by a human kidney, but when we started this, we had no idea that that would be true," says eGenesis chief executive Mike Curtis. The company has been using kidneys from Yucatan miniature pigs that have had 69 genome edits to stop human bodies from rejecting their organs. Andrews was the fourth patient in the US to receive a pig kidney.

• The study's lead author, Dr. Leonardo Riella of the Center for Transplantation Sciences and the Division of Nephrology at Mass General Brigham, says the shortage of organs is "the greatest crisis we have right now in transplantation," the Guardian reports. Riella says "xenotransplantation" could serve as "a bridge to get patients off dialysis while they wait for a human donor kidney, and potentially, as we establish long-term safety and durability, as a destination therapy in its own right."
• Andrews tells the New York Times that before he received the pig kidney, he was too weak to walk. "I was dying," he says. "I figured, if I'm going to die, I might as well do something for humanity and be part of this experiment." He says he's now healthier than he has been in years and has returned to swimming and kayaking, with a new outlook on life. "When you say 'stop and smell the roses,' that's my life now," he says. "I look at everything and go 'wow.'"