Short Wave - The First Woman To Get A New Kind Of Kidney Transplant

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Towana Looney became the first living person in the world to get a kidney from a new kind of genetically modified pig last month. Health correspondent Rob Stein got exclusive access to be in the operating room.Towana is a 53-year-old grandmother from Gadsden, Ala. She's been on dialysis for four hours a day, three days a week since 2016. Her immune system would reject a human kidney. So the Food and Drug Administration made an exception to its usual clinical study requirements to allow Looney this new kind of pig kidney. But the procedure is controversial. Interested in more environmental stories? Email us at [e-mail]. We'd love to hear from you!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Regina Barber here, and I'm here with my colleague, NPR health correspondent, and awesome guy, Rob Stein. Hey, Rob. Hey, Gina. I hear that you've been working on this really interesting story for the past year. Yeah, yeah. I've been following the developments of a biotech company called Rivikour that's been moving towards a very ambitious goal, and that is to use cloned genetically modified farm animals.

animals to provide organs for transplants for humans. Okay, so you're saying farm animals. So there's like a farm just full of cloned animals. Yeah, yeah. In fact, I went to visit this farm. I drove down a road through the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwest Virginia to visit the River River Farm back in February. This farm, it is like 22 buildings and around 300 pigs.

We had to change into hospital scrub before going inside to protect the pigs. They're really careful to make. sure visitors don't bring any pathogens that could infect the pigs. When we went into the buildings, we stepped into these tubs of disinfecting fluid to sterilize our boots. And then I got to see these cloned genetically modified adult female pigs. Do you want to hold one? It's okay. Yeah, it's okay.

And some of them were pregnant with cloned pig embryos that were also genetically modified. Well, you're like brinkied my brain here. Okay, so they're these identical organs in all of these pigs so they can be used in humans, right? That's the idea. That's right. They clone these pigs. They all have these 10 identical genetic modifications, and they're designed to make sure their organs, these piglets that are born, don't grow too big, won't cause complications like blood clots and won't be rejected by the human immune system. This sounds very like sci-fi film.

It did to me, too, especially when I first heard about it. It's real. And they're trying to address a very real problem, which is that more than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for transplants in the U.S. And about 17 die every day without getting one because there just aren't enough human organs available. It is devastating. Yeah. And last month, I was there for the very first transplant surgery of one of the Rivacore kidneys

with these 10 genetic modifications into a living patient. Wow. You saw the surgery. Yeah, I was inside the OR for the entire operation. And, you know, Gina, this is, I should say, very controversial in a lot of ways. I talked to bioethicists and scientists who have a lot of concerns, you know, concerns about the pigs, about the patients themselves who are desperate for anything. And even the possibility that this could cause a pandemic by spreading pig viruses to people.

So today on the show, the first living person to receive a new kind of genetically modified pig kidney. and what that could mean for the future of transplant medicine. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Hey, shortwaiver's Emily Kwong here. Believe it or not, the year is almost over. And as we are reflecting on 2024, we're thinking about the hundreds of podcast episodes we brought you this year. I mean, episodes about big things like climate change, nuclear energy, COVID,

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podcasts like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and even exclusive and discounted items from the NPR shop and the NPR Wine Club. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. You could do it right now at plus.m.m.org because this year, shortwave turned five years old. Whether you've been with us from the very start or you're listening this week for the first time supporting public media means you're part of a community of people who are curious about the world. We're honestly so proud to have served the public media community these past five years. Let's keep it going, but it can only be done with your help. So join NPR Plus today at plus.mpr.org. Thanks so much. Okay, Rob, so you were the only journalist allowed in the operating room, right? So, like, set the

scene. How was it? So this operating room is in New York City. And in the room, there was this huge screen on the wall with the flight path of one set of surgeons. They're flying back from rural Virginia with two kidneys from one of the cloned geneated of the pigs being bred at the River Vicar Resource Farm. Wow. Okay. So who is this patient being operated on receiving this transplant? Yeah, I met her a few minutes before they brought her into the OR. She's a 53-year-old grandmother. Her name is Tijuana Luni. She donated one of her kidneys to her mother in 1999. A few years later, she developed chronic high blood pressure during a pregnancy, and her remaining kidney failed in 2016. And since then, she's been on dialysis four hours a day, three days a week.

So she's been dealing with this for almost a decade. And this treatment, like transplant an organ from another animal, it's a new experimental approach, right? Oh, absolutely. It's very experimental. There have been other patients who've received other kinds of genetic pig kidneys and even hearts, and those organs seem to work well. Yeah? But the patients in those cases were gravely ill with many other health problems and only survived weeks or maybe months. But like I said earlier, this is the first transplant of this specific kind of genetically modified pig kidney into a living person.

Yeah, I don't think I've heard of clinical trials for this. Aren't those required before human patients can get these like experimental treatments? Yeah, that's right. In fact, the company's in conversation with the FDA to get approval for this right now, but it hasn't happened yet. So this was an exception to the FDA's usual requirements. It's called a compassionate use case, which, you know, gives patients who are desperately ill and basically have no other options access to experimental treatments. Antwana has an especially sensitive immune system, so doctors knew her body would reject a human kidney. Oh, no.

But in the operating room, everyone was pretty optimistic. She's in better condition than the other patients who have undergone this procedure. So we're hopeful. That's the lead surgeon, Dr. Robert Montgomery. I watched as an anesthesiologist put Juana under... Everybody ready? Wow. And then the surgical team got to work.

Robert, the surgeon, made an incision in Tijuana's lower abdomen to begin in in in in in inhuman to begin in in inksdakingly preparing a spot to implant the pig kidney. Okay, scissors, the long ones. Okay, there's the artery. Mm-hmm. Branch. This is fascinating. Yeah, it was all very dramatic.

You know, because as this was happening, the screen on the wall shows the helicopter approaching NYU Langone Health with the pig kidneys. The chopper swooped through the clear blue sky along the East River and sets down on the helipad. The arriving group places a white box about the size of a microwave oven that contains the pegs two kidneys on a wheelchair and rushes it into the operating room.

Wait, wait, so the organs arrive like during surgery. Exactly. While one team of surgeons was flying back with the pig kidneys, Robert Montgomery, the surgeon and his team were preparing Tijuana to get the transplant. When the chopper arrived with the pig, they had both the left and right kidneys from the pig, just in case something went wrong with one. Robert removed them from their plastic bags

and then meticulously started preparing one of them. So this thing in. And then they checked to make sure like everything's working, right? Yeah. Yes, this was a big bum. They check to see if blood from Tijuana's body is flowing into the pig kidney for the first time. Wow. All right, so we're about to refuse.

How's our blood pressure? You'll see it'll be kind of a little bit dark colored initially. And now I'm taking the clamp off the artery. And then it happens. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Oh, thank goodness.

I like my heart's racing and I'm just like hearing all this. like, so the surgery was a success? Like, how's to want to doing now? Yeah, it was very dramatic. They then checked to make sure the kitty was doing its job, which was producing urine. And then she was discharged from the hospital less than two weeks after the surgery, which was earlier than they expected. And yeah, and then I went to visit her at an apartment where she's staying for, you know, probably about three months not far from the hospital, so the doctors can keep an eye on her. And I have to say, she is in amazing spirits. Most of the symptoms that had limited to her before the surgery.

had disappeared. No weakness, no tiredness, no fatigue, no swelling from fluid intake. I can eat more, I can drink more, I can walk longer distance. It's just amazing. Wow, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, Twana says she'll never forget the first time she peed after the surgery. It was the first time she'd been able to do that in almost eight years. I was like, wow, I told the nurse I'm peeing. She said, no kidding. She's a European alive, which is a good thing. That was exciting to me. That is incredible.

And she's really looking forward to spending more time with her daughters and grandchildren once she can go home and returning to her job as a cashier at Dollar General and activities she just couldn't do before. I just want to go shopping and not have to sit down. And I want to eat what I want to eat while I'm shopping. And I want to travel and stay more than three days. He's ain't got to come back to dialysis. They ain't got to leave a day early.

They're a dialysis at 4.30 in the morning at 5 o'clock. I am so happy for her. It seems like she's optimistic and, like, her doctors are optimistic too. But this procedure is still, like, very controversial, right? Oh, absolutely. You know, I talked to other scientists and bioethicists who said there's not a ton of scientific evidence to support these kinds of surgeries. El Cilson Johnson is a bioethicist that's soon the upstatement. Medical University in Syracuse, and she told me she's worried about the health of the pigs

and about people getting these treatments. And she says the way it's happening now with individual experiments, all different teams and protocols and organs and different genetic modifications is not the best way to do science. Plus, she worries that these operations might be exploiting patients who are desperate for anything that could help them. It's worrisome when patients do something because they believe it's going to save their life when we don't have good evidence that that will actually happen. And I worry about patients like that being exceptionally vulnerable and potentially exploited even unintentionally and just being exceptionally vulnerable to false hope in a situation where hope is at this point perhaps not warranted.

She's also concerned about the possibility of transmitting viruses from animals to patients, even something that could potentially be transmitted from person to person. The fear is another pandemic. In fact, everyone in the operating room that day, including me, is being tested to make sure we didn't catch a pig virus. Oh, that would be awful. Tell me about it. But on the other hand, patients like Tijuana are out of other options. Right.

And given that, like, what do her doctor say about her chances for, like, long-term health? Will this kidney last her a long time? That's the big question. And, you know, Gina, we're in uncharted territory here. No one really knows what's going to happen. In fact, after being discharged early to an apartment near the hospital, Kiwanah was back in the hospital for a few days because she had to get an additional anti-rejection drug. Oh, no.

Yeah, that was a little worrisome. But her pig kidney is still working well, it seems, and doctors remain optimistic. And that's because, you know, she's a lot healthier than the other patients who had received other kinds of genetically modified organs before this. And also, even if this pig organ does fail, she still has the option to go back on dialysis, despite how unpleasant that would be. And, you know, Tawana, who's very religious, says she's happy with the decision, despite what she's heard from some of her friends. I have one tell me, it's not in the Bible for us to receive human, for a human to receive animal poise. I said, you ate bacon this morning for breakfast, then you? is life-saving.

Rob, thank you so much for bringing us this incredible story. I hope you come back and keep us updated. Oh, absolutely. I'll definitely be following this one. This episode was produced by Jessica Young and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and Rob Check the Facts. Patrick Murray was our audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.