Richard Rick Slayman will forever be the Boston patient in medical annals. Slayman, 62, a Massachusetts Department of Transportation supervisor, knew firsthand what it was like to be connected to dialysis and receive a human transplant in 2018, which caused rejection in 2023. So, in addition to the initial ailments (diabetes and hypertension), developed other problems, such as congestive heart failure.
Upon returning to dialysis, he experienced serious vascular complications and had to be hospitalized from time to time. Slayman, who continued working, faced a long waiting list to receive another human organ. At least five or six years.
Dr. Winfred Williams, associate chief of the Nephrology specialty at Mas General Hospital and the patient's primary physician at that center, raised the possibility of receiving an organ from a pig. Slayman asked numerous questions, although in the end he accepted the procedure.
“I saw it not only as a way to help myself, but also as a way to provide hope to thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” the patient stressed in a statement provided by the hospital.
Slayman made that statement after making history and becoming the first live transplant with the kidney of a genetically modified pig. If this milestone in the field of so-called xenotransplants (from animals to people) is successful, this will be a milestone that will offer light to thousands of patients suffering from kidney failure in the United States and around the world.
As reported this Thursday by Mass General, the post-operative signs are promising. The new kidney began to produce urine shortly after last Saturday's operation – four hours in the operating room – and Slayman's conditions are improving. He is already walking through the hallways of the hospital floor and it is expected that he will soon be sent home.
“It's really a big step forward,” Williams said in a statement to NBC. “If the kidney continues to function, this will represent enormous progress in different areas,” she said.
One, without a doubt, is that Slayman is African-American and the procedure may have special relevance for black patients, who suffer from kidney ailments at high rates. Williams argued that a new source of kidneys can solve an intractable problem on the ground of inadequate minority access to organ transplants.
Experts indicated that, if kidneys from genetically treated animals allow large-scale transplants, "dialysis will become obsolete."
In the US alone there are 800,000 people with ailments of this type who have to be connected to dialysis, a mechanism that removes toxins from the blood and makes it easier to stay alive. And in this country alone there are more than 100,000 who are waiting for a kidney from a living or dead donor. About 25,000 transplants are performed a year in the United States.
Scientific advances have made xenotransplants, in which animals' genes are modified so that their organs are more compatible with humans, increasingly closer to reality.
In 2021, a modified pig kidney was attached to a brain-dead patient in New York and was observed generating urine. An identical issue was later announced in Alabama with similar results. While in Maryland they performed two transplants of genetically treated porcine hearts to a pair of seriously ill humans, with no hope of survival. There was no initial rejection, but both patients died shortly afterwards.
The transplanted kidney now comes from the biotechnology company eGenesis, which has removed three genes that are generally involved in the rejection of these organs. And they inserted seven genes to increase compatibility. Pigs carry retroviruses that can infect humans, and the company also inactivated the pathogens.
To clear up doubts, Dr. Williams joked that Slayman “looks like his old self.”
