An organ from a gene-edited pig keeps a person alive

Pigs' organs are the right size for people, and gene editing can take out the pig genes that make a human body reject them at once and add human ones that calm the rest. In January 2022 a man too ill for a human heart lived two months on a pig's; since 2024 several people have lived on pig kidneys, the longest for most of a year. Formal trials cleared by the United States regulator began in 2025. It is a first human, several times over, and the first step towards organs made to order.

What would count

A person receives a heart, kidney, liver or lung from a pig whose genes were edited for the purpose and lives for at least thirty days with that organ doing its job, in a report by the transplant centre or a peer-reviewed paper.

Who settles it: The transplant centre's own release naming the patient, the peer-reviewed case report, and the regulator's trial clearance or approval record

Where it stands

First human. Reached on 7 January 2022, on the record of medschool.umaryland.edu. Could move a stage within 1 to 5 years.

The last reading

Once a week every upgrade is read against the news, against what would count above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every reading of this upgrade is on this week's reading.

• 16 October 2026 Nothing new

  Nothing in the window itself. Just before it, on 2026-09-03, The Lancet published the case report of Tim Andrews, who lived 271 days on a gene-edited pig kidney (transplanted 2025-01-25, removed October 2025) and then received a human kidney in January 2026; that is a longer figure on the rung this entry already holds. The FDA-cleared trials of pig kidneys are enrolling, and Mass General Brigham has said a third transplant is planned later in 2026. Nothing toward a regulator's approval.

Notes

The record is the University of Maryland's own announcement of David Bennett's pig heart transplant, performed on 7 January 2022; the peer-reviewed case report followed in June 2022. The animal record is the 2018 Munich report of baboons living for months on pig hearts. Pig kidneys followed in 2024 (Boston, then New York). The longest published case is a Boston man who lived 271 days on a pig kidney in 2025 before receiving a human one, reported in The Lancet in September 2026; the maker of that kidney said the same month that another patient had passed nine months and was still going. The next rung, in clinical use, needs a regulator's approval for use outside a trial; the trials cleared in 2025 are the step before.