Surgical teams at NYU Langone Health performed the world s first genetically modified pig kidney transplant into a human body in September and November 2021, and then transplanted two pig hearts in the summer of 2022. These procedures were done in patients declared dead based on neurologic criteria (decedents) and maintained on ventilators with the consent of their families. Demonstrating the field s progress, NYU Langone in April 2024 transplanted a pig kidney into a living patient.
A large team of biomedical researchers affiliated with a host of institutions across the U.S., the U.K., Saudi Arabia and France, has learned more about many of the factors involved in xenotransplantation as they conducted a large number of tests on two brain-dead human patients that had received genetically engineered pig hearts.
A new study finds a direct link between two problems that emerge in Alzheimer’s disease: a buildup of double-stranded breaks (DSBs) in the DNA of neurons and the inflammatory behavior of microglia, the brain’s immune cells.