Towana Looney, a year of 50 years of Alabama, had been grafted at the end of November 2024 with a genetically modified pork kidney. This practice remains very experimental, but what nourishes the hope of responding to chronic organ shortages. The American had to take away the organ that his body began to reject after more than four months.
This withdrawal illustrates how distant this goal is, but it is encouraging. The body fulfilled its functions for 130 days, a record. Until now, no patient had survived more than two months after this transplant.
“For the first time since 2016, I could enjoy my friends and family having time, without having to plan everything around dialysis treatments,” said the patient in a statement shared by Nyu Langone hospital in New York. She says she was “very grateful (…), although the result was not the one they expected.”
An investigation to determine the cause of rejection
This American had donated one of his kidneys in 1999 to his mother and had lived on dialysis for eight years after a complication occurred during a pregnancy had damaged his remaining kidney. Without finding a compatible donor, he had authorized to receive a genetically modified kidney because his state of health deteriorated.
Despite the first encouraging results, “in early April, he experienced a decrease in renal function due to acute rejection,” said his surgeon, Robert Montgomery, in the statement.
“The cause of this rejection episode after a long period of stability is the issue of an investigation, but has followed a reduction in its immunosuppressive treatment to deal with an infection not related to the pork kidney,” he said.
This treatment aims to inhibit the activity of the immune system to prevent this last attack from the grafted organ and provoces its rejection, but weakens the body’s capabilities to respond to external threats.
The patient and her doctors made the decision to withdraw the body to preserve a “future transplant possibility for her,” said Robert Montgomery.
Source: BFM TV
