Recently, United Medical Services (UTHR.US) announced that it has successfully transplanted a pig kidney and thymus developed by the company into a patient with heart and kidney failure.
The Zhitong Finance App learned that recently, United States Healthcare (UTHR.US) announced that it has successfully transplanted a pig kidney and thymus developed by the company into a patient with heart and kidney failure. Currently, the patient is recovering well at the hospital, and no organ rejection has been observed 12 days after the transplant. This is the world's first porcine thymic kidney transplant procedure transplanted to a living patient.
It is worth mentioning that the pig kidney used in the world's first pig kidney transplant announced last month carried 69 types of gene editing, while the pig kidney developed by United only had 1 type of gene editing. If proven effective, pigs carrying only a single gene edit can be raised more quickly to quickly solve the shortage of organs.
According to reports, this transplant uses a heterologous thymic kidney developed by United (the commercial name is scheduled to be UthymoKidney), which includes a type of pig kidney currently being developed and thymic tissue from the same pig. The purpose of using pig thymus tissue is to regulate the organ recipient's immune system so that it sees UthymokIDNEY as “its own” tissue, thereby reducing the possibility of rejection. UthymokIDNEY's source pigs only perform a single gene edit for the gene that synthesizes α-galactose (α-Gal) on the surface of cells, inactivating or “knocking out” this gene.
Since alpha-galactose was not detected in pig tissue containing this modification, United called this pig group of tissues GALSAFE. Alpha-Gal is a type of sugar on the surface of cells that causes pig organs to be immediately rejected by the body. In December 2020, the Galsafe pig series was approved by the FDA for use as a potential source of human food or biomedical use, and the announced transplant is the first time this pig series has been used in live patients.