Latest news with #NYU-Langone
USA Today
11-04-2025
- Health
- USA Today
She set the record for living longest with a pig kidney. Then it failed.
She set the record for living longest with a pig kidney. Then it failed. A pig kidney kept an Alabama woman alive for five months - longer than anyone ever before. Doctors aren't sure yet why it suddenly stopped. Show Caption Hide Caption Pig kidney transplant not linked to man's death, doctors say Doctors say they don't believe the man who received the world's first pig kidney transplant died because of the transplanted organ. Towana Looney's transplanted pig kidney was removed after 130 days due to rejection. This was the longest a human had survived with a pig kidney transplant. She has returned to dialysis and awaits future transplant possibilities. Towana Looney lived for more than four months with a kidney from a pig instead of her own damaged ones. But in early April, her body ‒ which had tolerated the kidney longer than any human had ever survived with an animal organ ‒ suddenly rejected it. Doctors aren't yet sure why, but it happened after they reduced the medication Looney, from Gadsden, Alabama, was taking to tamp down her immune response to the pig kidney. On April 4, 130 days after her transplant, the kidney was removed, according to a news release from NYU-Langone, which handled the transplant. Looney recovered quickly and was discharged home five days after the procedure. 'I'm so grateful to have been given the opportunity to be part of this incredible research," Looney said in the statement released by the hospital. "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 overcome kidney disease." She will now be kept alive with three-times-a-week dialysis treatments, as she had been for nine years before the transplant. Looney said she had appreciated the break. "For the first time since 2016, I enjoyed time with friends and family without planning around dialysis treatments." Looney's transplant was part of a larger effort to provide genetically engineered pig organs to help solve the human organ shortage. A handful of other patients have received pig kidneys and hearts. Only the most recent of the transplants made public remains alive. More than a 100,000 Americans are currently waiting on organ transplant lists, hoping for a living person to donate one of their kidneys or for someone to die with healthy enough organs and a willingness to donate. Others never make the lists at all, or, like Looney, wait for years for a match that makes medical sense. Looney, 53, had turned to an animal organ after years of not being able to match with any human donors. She was a genetically difficult match, doctors said, and was made more difficult after blood transfusions she received during a difficult pregnancy led her to develop antibodies to many human organs. The pigs available for transplant are gene-edited to make them less likely to be immediately recognized and rejected by the human immune system, and in some cases, to reduce the risk of blood clots. Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, who led Looney's treatment, said he's not yet sure why the kidney failed but decided that removal was the safest course of action. "This preserves future possibilities for transplantation for her as knowledge and innovations progress," he said in the hospital statement. In a separate statement, United Therapeutics, the company that genetically engineers pigs for so-called xenotransplantation, said the kidney seems to have worked well until Looney's immune medication was reduced. "One of the biggest challenges for transplant recipients – human-to-human or pig-to-human – is theprevention and management of infections while simultaneously balancing the level of immunosuppressionmedications required to prevent rejection, especially in the first months after surgery," the company wrote. "Mrs. Looney's bravery has enabled major advancements in the field of xenotransplantation and adds to thefoundational insights made possible by the contributions of other patients." People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals finds the whole idea of using pig organs unethical. Instead, more people should become organ donors, PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo, said in a statement. "Humans need organs and pigs need theirs, too. Stealing them from one animal to put them into another is a long, cruel way around a far kinder and easier solution: Cleaning up the organ procurement system, which wastes as many as 28,000 organs annually, and enacting presumed consent laws," she wrote. "This would save more lives—including the animals'."
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
She set the record for living longest with a pig kidney. Then it failed.
Towana Looney lived for more than four months with a kidney from a pig instead of her own damaged ones. But in early April, her body ‒ which had tolerated the kidney longer than any human had ever survived with an animal organ ‒ suddenly rejected it. Doctors aren't yet sure why, but it happened after they reduced the medication Looney, from Gadsden, Alabama, was taking to tamp down her immune response to the pig kidney. On April 4, 130 days after her transplant, the kidney was removed, according to a news release from NYU-Langone, which handled the transplant. Looney recovered quickly and was discharged home five days after the procedure. 'I'm so grateful to have been given the opportunity to be part of this incredible research," Looney said in the statement released by the hospital. "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 overcome kidney disease." She will now be kept alive with three-times-a-week dialysis treatments, as she had been for nine years before the transplant. Looney said she had appreciated the break. "For the first time since 2016, I enjoyed time with friends and family without planning around dialysis treatments." Looney's transplant was part of a larger effort to provide genetically engineered pig organs to help solve the human organ shortage. A handful of other patients have received pig kidneys and hearts. Only the most recent of the transplants made public remains alive. More than a 100,000 Americans are currently waiting on organ transplant lists, hoping for a living person to donate one of their kidneys or for someone to die with healthy enough organs and a willingness to donate. Others never make the lists at all, or, like Looney, wait for years for a match that makes medical sense. Looney, 53, had turned to an animal organ after years of not being able to match with any human donors. She was a genetically difficult match, doctors said, and was made more difficult after blood transfusions she received during a difficult pregnancy led her to develop antibodies to many human organs. The pigs available for transplant are gene-edited to make them less likely to be immediately recognized and rejected by the human immune system, and in some cases, to reduce the risk of blood clots. Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, who led Looney's treatment, said he's not yet sure why the kidney failed but decided that removal was the safest course of action. "This preserves future possibilities for transplantation for her as knowledge and innovations progress," he said in the hospital statement. In a separate statement, United Therapeutics, the company that genetically engineers pigs for so-called xenotransplantation, said the kidney seems to have worked well until Looney's immune medication was reduced. "One of the biggest challenges for transplant recipients – human-to-human or pig-to-human – is theprevention and management of infections while simultaneously balancing the level of immunosuppressionmedications required to prevent rejection, especially in the first months after surgery," the company wrote. "Mrs. Looney's bravery has enabled major advancements in the field of xenotransplantation and adds to thefoundational insights made possible by the contributions of other patients." People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals finds the whole idea of using pig organs unethical. Instead, more people should become organ donors, PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo, said in a statement. "Humans need organs and pigs need theirs, too. Stealing them from one animal to put them into another is a long, cruel way around a far kinder and easier solution: Cleaning up the organ procurement system, which wastes as many as 28,000 organs annually, and enacting presumed consent laws," she wrote. "This would save more lives—including the animals'." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A woman's historic pig kidney transplant suddenly fails
