Doctors Continue Research to Save Human Lives With Pig Hearts

A team of cardiac doctors affiliated with New York University has successfully transplanted hearts from genetically modified pigs into recently deceased patients, allowing them a newfound opportunity of studying the potentially life-saving procedure more closely.

Operating on the deceased as opposed to living patients “allowed more in-depth study of how well the recipients’ bodies tolerated the pig hearts,” explains Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. “We can do much more frequent monitoring and really sort of understand the biology and fill in all of the unknowns.”

Both patients had a long history of heart disease and were maintained alive by ventilator support. Following the transplant at NYU Langone Health, the deceased patients still received standard post-transplant medications. After three days of monitoring, no signs of early organ rejection were detected. By modifying the organ so it closely resembles the human’s, it is possible to “fool” the immune system and reduce the chances of rejection. Some 105,000 Americans are currently on waiting lists for organ transplants, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a non-profit that serves as the nation’s organ transplant system.