Late last year, 53-year old Towana Looney, of Gadsden, Alabama, became the third patient to receive a kidney from a genetically engineered pig and she is still thriving.
This advance in the field of xenotransplantation, or animal-to-human transplants, is a big one — and hopefully will not just be life-changing for Looney but can teach the field so much about how to bring these organs to more people.
Looney had few options open to her. She had donated a kidney to her mother in 1999, but years later suffered from a dangerous form of high blood pressure during pregnancy that ultimately led to kidney failure. Yet that experience and related blood transfusions also left her with a slew of antibodies that made it nearly impossible to find a suitable kidney donor. She’s been stuck with dialysis for eight long years.
