The demand for kidney transplants is far from met by human donors — a problem that may be solved by the clinical translation of porcine kidney xenotransplantation. A new paper describes the development of genetically ‘humanized’ pigs, the kidneys of which kept nephrectomized cynomolgus macaques alive for up to 2 years.
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Acknowledgements
We thank M. M. Mohiuddin (Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA) and J. Denner (Institute of Virology, Free University of Berlin, Germany) for critical review of the manuscript before submission. Our xenotransplantation studies are supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (CRC-TR 127) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF; Sinergia grant CRSII5_198577/1).
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The authors are co-founders of XTransplant GmbH, Starnberg, Germany.
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Wolf, E., Reichart, B. Kidney xenotransplantation edges closer to the clinic. Nat Rev Nephrol 20, 204–205 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-023-00790-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-023-00790-1