The First Woman To Get A New Kind Of Kidney Transplant
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What is the groundbreaking kidney transplant discussed in this episode?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey Shortwavers, Regina Barber here and I'm here with my colleague, NPR health correspondent and awesome guy, Rob Stein. Hey Rob.
Hey Gina.
I hear that you've been working on this really interesting story for the past year.
Yeah, yeah. I've been following the developments of a biotech company called Revivacor that's been moving towards a very ambitious goal, and that is to use cloned, genetically modified farm animals to provide organs for transplants for humans.
Okay, so you're saying farm animals. So there's like a farm just full of cloned animals.
Yeah, yeah. In fact, I went to visit this farm. I drove down a road through the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwest Virginia to visit the Rivercore Farm back in February. This farm, it has like 22 buildings and around 300 pigs. We had to change into hospital scrubs before going inside to protect the pigs. They're really careful to make sure visitors don't bring in any pathogens that could infect the pigs. When we went into the buildings, we stepped into these tubs of disinfecting fluid to sterilize our boots. And then I got to see these cloned, genetically modified adult female pigs.
Do you want to hold one? No.
And some of them were pregnant with cloned pig embryos that were also genetically modified.
Wow, you're like breaking my brain here. Okay, so there are these identical organs in all of these pigs so they can be used in humans, right?
That's the idea. That's right. They clone these pigs. They all have these 10 identical genetic modifications, and they're designed to make sure their organs, these piglets that are born, don't grow too big, won't cause complications like blood clots, and won't be rejected by the human immune system.
This sounds very like sci-fi film.
It did to me, too, especially when I first heard about it. But it's real. And they're trying to address a very real problem, which is that more than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for transplants in the U.S. And about 17 die every day without getting one because there just aren't enough human organs available.
It is devastating.
Yeah. And last month, I was there for the very first transplant surgery of one of the Rivivacor kidneys with these 10 genetic modifications into a living patient.
Wow, you saw the surgery.
Yeah, I was inside the OR for the entire operation. And, you know, Gina, this is, I should say, very controversial in a lot of ways. I talked to bioethicists and scientists who have a lot of concerns, you know, concerns about the pigs, about the patients themselves who are desperate for anything, and even the possibility that this could cause a pandemic by spreading pig viruses to people.
So today on the show, the first living person to receive a new kind of genetically modified pig kidney and what that could mean for the future of transplant medicine. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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