Are pigs the future of organ transplants?

ON MARCH 16, A TRANSPLANT-SURGERY TEAM AT MASSA-chusetts General Hospital successfully transplanted a modified pig kidney into a human: 62-year-old Richard Slayman.

- ALICE PARK

The groundbreaking, four-hour surgery was the culmination of years of work transplanting kidneys from a specially bred group of pigs-genetically modified to more closely resemble those of humans-into primates. Encouraged by those results, the team at Mass General Brigham was confident it was time to test the pig organs in the first patient.

Slayman, a manager at the Massachusetts department of transportation, had received a human kidney transplant five years ago, but as is often the case with kidney disease, the organ began to fail and he continued to need dialysis. His health progressively worsened. "At one point, he literally said, I just cannot go on like this," said Dr. Winfred Williams, Slayman's physician and associate chair of nephrology at Mass General, during a briefing.