A 56-year-old man with liver failure has become the first living person to be surgically connected to a genetically modified pig liver, says the team that conducted the surgery. The pig organ filtered the man’s blood for a few days while he waited for a human liver transplant, they say.
The man has since received a human liver and is recovering well, says Lin Wang, one of the surgeons who led the procedure in January at Xijing Hospital of the Air Force Medical University in Xi’an, China. Wang says his team plans to submit the results to a peer-reviewed journal.
Proponents of transplanting genetically modified animal organs into people, a procedure called xenotransplantation, hope that the method could reduce the number of people who die while waiting for a human organ. At least a dozen people in the United States and China have received pig organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and a thymus — and clinical trials are under way in both nations. However, organ transplants are high-risk surgeries and recipients must take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives. In the latest surgery, the recipient was connected to a pig liver outside their body — a procedure called extracorporeal perfusion.
The procedure is a bridging therapy that allows a person’s organs to recover, and it can be lifesaving for people who are too sick to wait for a human donor organ without intervention, says Wayne Hawthorne, a Surgeon and Transplant Researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia.
‘Remarkable’
Extracorporeal perfusion using pig organs has been performed since the 1990s; however, the development of genetically modified pig organs that are more compatible with people reduces the risk of organ rejection. A US team has connected at least four (4) clinically dead people to external, genetically modified pig livers. That surgeons in China have been able to do this in a living person is “a remarkable achievement”, adds Hawthorne.
Muhammad Mohiuddin, a Clinician-Researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, who led the first pig-heart transplant into a living person in 2022, agrees that the technology could be lifesaving.
Hawthorne and Mohiuddin say they are eager to know more details about the surgery in China, including the amount of immune-suppressing therapy that was used, how the man’s health changed over time and how long could someone be connected to the external liver. Results of liver-function tests before, during and after the surgery will also be needed if the team publishes its findings, Hawthorne adds. “This is all the basics for a liver-transplant paper.”
The recipient in China had chronic hepatitis B infection, a serious liver illness, and damage caused by alcohol, which led to a sudden deterioration in his liver function, says Wang. He had been hospitalized in Shanghai, China, for a month before Wang’s team treated him. Without a donor organ available, the surgeons decided — with consent from the man and his family — to test whether a pig liver could take over the functions of his failing liver.
The pig liver contained six (6) genetic modifications, says Wang, and was supplied by the company ClonOrgan Biotechnology in Chengdu, China. The six (6) genetic modifications included three (3) deactivated pig genes and three (3) introduced genes that produce human proteins, to reduce the risk of the recipient rejecting the organ.
External filter
The surgeons stitched tubes to a vein in the man’s leg, connecting him to a perfusion device containing the pig liver. His blood was redirected through the pig liver to remove harmful waste products that build up owing to liver failure. The physicians said that there were no signs that the organ was being rejected, and that the man’s own liver function began to improve.
The man was disconnected from the perfusion system after nearly three (3) days to reduce the risk of infection and complications.
Megan Sykes, a Surgeon and Immunologist at Columbia University in New York City, says it is significant that the man in the latest study could be taken off the perfusion for several days while he waited for a human organ to became available. However, it is unclear whether the man survived without the external liver because his own liver began to recover or because the benefits of being connected to the perfusion system persisted. “I can’t say from the information that was provided,” she says.
Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a trial to test whether extracorporeal perfusion using genetically modified pig livers can be used to safely treat people with organ failure.
Mike Curtis, the Chief Executive of eGenesis, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is one of the bioengineering companies running the trial, says the trial is still recruiting participants.
REFERENCE: Nature; 06 MAR 2026; Rachel Fieldhouse