“It has been truly extraordinary to see the first-ever preclinical demonstration that appropriately modified pig kidneys can provide normal, life-sustaining kidney function in a human safely and be achieved using a standard immunosuppression regimen,” said UAB transplant surgeon scientist Jayme Locke, M.D., director of UAB’s Comprehensive Transplant Institute in the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine and lead author of the JAMA Surgery paper. “The kidneys functioned remarkably over the course of this seven-day study. We were able to gather additional safety and scientific information critical to our efforts to seek FDA clearance of a Phase I clinical trial in living humans and hopefully add a new, desperately needed solution to address an organ shortage crisis responsible for tens of thousands of preventable deaths each year.”

Surgeons at NYU Langone Health have transplanted a genetically engineered pig kidney that continues to function well after 32 days in a man declared dead by neurologic criteria and maintained with a beating heart on ventilator support. This represents the longest period that a gene-edited pig kidney has functioned in a human, and the latest step toward the advent of an alternate, sustainable supply of organs for transplant. “This work demonstrates a pig kidney—with only one genetic modification and without experimental medications or devices—can replace the function of a human kidney for at least 32 days without being rejected,” said Dr. Montgomery

This week's featured top downloaded paper from 2021: Early Allograft Dysfunction and Complications in DCD Liver Transplantation: Expert Consensus Statements From the International Liver Transplantation Society.

This review covers aspects of ddcfDNA that support informed use of the test including the basic biology of ddcfDNA, methodological nuances of testing, and general recommendations for use in kidney transplant populations.

Normothermic machine perfusion is accompanied with loss of endothelial glycocalyx and VEGFR-2 expression, whereas endothelial cell loss seems limited

Neurotoxicity is a common side effect of #tacrolimus, commonly used by kidney tx recipients. @AditiGuptaKUMC et al. studied neurotoxic effects of once-daily extended-release vs immediate-release of tacrolimus.