Doctors remove pig kidney from an Alabama woman after a record 130 days
[April 12, 2025]
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama woman who lived with a pig kidney for a
record 130 days had the organ removed after her body began rejecting it
and is back on dialysis, doctors announced Friday – a disappointment in
the ongoing quest for animal-to-human transplants.
Towana Looney is recovering well from the April 4 removal surgery at NYU
Langone Health and has returned home to Gadsden, Alabama. In a
statement, she thanked her doctors for “the opportunity to be part of
this incredible research.”
“Though the outcome is not what anyone wanted, I know a lot was learned
from my 130 days with a pig kidney – and that this can help and inspire
many others in their journey to overcoming kidney disease,” Looney
added.
Scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more
humanlike to address a severe shortage of transplantable human organs.
More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need
a kidney, and thousands die waiting.
Before Looney’s transplant only four other Americans had received
experimental xenotransplants of gene-edited pig organs – two hearts and
two kidneys that lasted no longer than two months. Those recipients, who
were severely ill before the surgery, died.
Now researchers are attempting these transplants in slightly less sick
patients, like Looney. A New Hampshire man who received a pig kidney in
January is faring well and a rigorous study of pig kidney transplants is
set to begin this summer. Chinese researchers also recently announced a
successful kidney xenotransplant.
Looney had been on dialysis since 2016 and didn’t qualify for a regular
transplant – her body was abnormally primed to reject a human kidney. So
she sought out a pig kidney and it functioned well – she called herself
“superwoman” and lived longer than anyone with a gene-edited pig organ
before, from her Nov. 25 transplant until early April when her body
began rejecting it.
NYU xenotransplant pioneer Dr. Robert Montgomery, Looney’s surgeon, said
what triggered that rejection is being investigated. But he said Looney
and her doctors agreed it would be less risky to remove the pig kidney
than to try saving it with higher, riskier doses of anti-rejection
drugs.
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Towana Looney, a pig kidney transplant recipient, gets a morning
check-up with Dr. Jeffrey Stern at NYU Langone Health in New York,
Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum, File)
 “We did the safe thing,” Montgomery
told The Associated Press. “She’s no worse off than she was before
(the xenotransplant) and she would tell you she’s better off because
she had this 4½ month break from dialysis.”
Shortly before the rejection began, Looney had suffered an infection
related to her prior time on dialysis and her immune-suppressing
anti-rejection drugs were slightly lowered, Montgomery said. At the
same time, her immune system was reactivating after the transplant.
Those factors may have combined to damage the new kidney, he said.
Rejection is a common threat after transplants of human organs, too,
and sometimes cost patients their new organ. Doctors face a
balancing act in tamping down patients’ immune systems just enough
to preserve the new organ while allowing them to fight infection.
It’s an even bigger challenge with xenotransplantation. While these
pig organs have been altered to help prevent immediate rejection,
patients still require immune-suppressing drugs. Which drugs are
best to prevent different, later forms of rejection isn't clear,
said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, another
xenotransplant pioneer. Different research groups are using
different combinations, he said.
“When we have more experience, we’ll know what kind of
immunosuppression is really necessary for xenotransplant,” Kawai
said
Montgomery said Looney’s experience offers valuable lessons for the
upcoming clinical trial.
Making xenotransplant ultimately work “is going to be won with
singles and doubles, not swinging for the fence every time we do one
of these,” he said.
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