By Lauran Neerergaard, Associated Press Medical Writer
An Alabama woman passed a major milestone Saturday to become the longest living recipient of a pig organization transplant – Healthy and full of energy with her new kidney for 61 days and counting.
“I’m superwoman,” Towana Looney told The Associated Press, laughing about outdoing family members on long walks through New York City as she continues her recovery. “It’s a new perspective on life.”
Looney’s vibrant recovery is a morale boost in the quest to make it Animal-to-human transplants a reality. Only four other Americans have received wildly experimental transplants of gene-edited pig organs- two hearts And Two kidneys – and no one lived more than two months.
“If you saw her on the street, you would have no idea that she is the only person in the world walking around with a pig organ inside them that is functioning,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who led Looney’s transplant.
Montgomery called Looney’s kidney function “absolutely normal.” Doctors hope she can leave New York—where she is living temporarily for post-transplant checkups—for her Gadsden, Alabama, home in about another month.
“We’re quite optimistic that this will continue to work and work well for, you know, an important period of time,” he said.
Being scientists genetically modified pigs So their organs are more human to address a serious shortage of transplantable human organs. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most in need of a kidney, and thousands are dying waiting.
Pig organ transplants so far have been “compassionate use” cases, experiments that the Food and Drug Administration allows only in special circumstances for people from other options.
And the handful of hospitals trying them are sharing information about what worked and what didn’t, in preparation for the world’s first formal studies of xenotransplantation, expected to begin sometime this year. United Therapeutics, which supplied Looney’s kidney, recently asked the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin a trial.
How Looney Fares is ‘very precious experience,’ said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the world First pig kidney Transplanted last year and is working with another pig developer, Egenesis.
Looney was much healthier than the previous patients, Kawai noted, so her progress will help inform subsequent efforts. “We have to learn from each other,” he said.
Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999. Later pregnancy complications caused high blood pressure that damaged her remaining kidney, which eventually failed, something incredibly rare among living donors. She spent eight years on dialysis before doctors concluded she would probably never receive a donated organ—she had developed super-high levels of antibodies to be abnormally ready to attack another human kidney.
So Looney, 53, sought out the pig experiment. No one knew how it would work in someone “highly sensitized” with those overactive antibodies.
Montgomery’s team discharged just 11 days after the Nov. 25 surgery and has closely monitored her recovery through blood tests and other measurements. About three weeks after the transplant, they caught subtle signs that rejection was beginning – signs they had learned to look for thanks to a transplant 2023 Experiment When a pig kidney worked for 61 days in a deceased man whose body was donated for research.
Montgomery said they successfully treated Looney and there has been no sign of rejection since then – and a few weeks ago they met the family behind that deceased body investigation.
“It feels really good to know that the decision I made for NYU to use my brother was the right decision and it helps people,” said Mary Miller-Duffy, of Newburgh, New York.
Looney, in turn, is trying to help others, serving as what Montgomery calls an ambassador for people who have reached out to her through social media, sharing their distress about the long wait for transplants and wondering about pig kidneys.
One, she said, was considered for a xenotransplant at another hospital but was afraid and wondered whether he should proceed.
“I didn’t want to convince him whether I should do it or not,” Looney said. Instead, she asked if he was religious and urged him to pray, to “go with your faith, what your heart tells you.”
“I like talking to people, I like helping people,” she added. “I want to be an educational piece for scientists” to help others.
There is no way to predict how long Looney’s new kidney will work, but if it were to fail, she could receive dialysis again.
“The truth is, we don’t really know what the next hurdles are because this is the first time we’ve gotten this far,” Montgomery said. “We really need to keep an eye on her.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science and Education Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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