Her Kidneys, Heart Were Failing. A Novel Approach Saved Her

"We're in a new universe in transplantation," Dr. Robert Montgomery of the transplant institute at NYU Langone Health said Wednesday. He announced that a New Jersey woman is the second living person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney, mere weeks after the first. Lisa Pisano, 54, of Cookstown—who also received a genetically-altered white blood cell-producing thymus gland from the same pig—was close to death, facing heart failure and end-stage kidney disease when she arrived at the hospital. "I didn't really have a life," she tells NPR. "I was almost at the point of giving up." Now, nearly two weeks after the April 12 surgery, "I'm feeling better and better and better every day."

Pisano was ineligible to receive a human kidney due to her health conditions and "high levels of antibodies harmful to human tissue," per ABC News. When doctors mentioned the experimental transplant of a pig kidney—genetically modified to minimize the risk of her body rejecting it and made possible by the FDA's "compassionate use" program—"my first thought was, 'Wow, I can't even believe that was even possible,'" she tells NPR.

Hoping for more time with her children and grandchildren, she decided to go through with it. She received a mechanical heart pump days before the pig organs. ABC News notes she is the first person with a mechanical heart pump to have received an organ transplant. "None of us could have imagined that it would have gone this smoothly," says Montgomery. "Her kidney is working better than yours or mine. So we're optimistic that she'll be able to go home ... and live a comfortable life." Before that happens, Pisano is expected to spend months recovering in the hospital while taking anti-rejection medication and undergoing close observation.

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Some critics fear complications, including the spread of pig viruses to people. But if such transplants are successful across a variety of patients, it would be "transformative," Montgomery tells NPR, noting animals could serve as "a sustainable, unlimited source of organs," potentially preventing the 17 deaths of people waiting for organ transplants each day. "If it didn't work for me, it might have worked for someone else and it could have helped the next person," Pisano tells the AP. (The other recipient of a pig kidney is doing well.)