First person to receive pig heart transplant dies after two months

WASHINGTON: The first person to receive a pig heart transplant has died two months after the historic procedure, the hospital that carried out the surgery said on Wednesday. 

David Bennett, 57, who passed away Mar 8, had received his transplant on Jan 7, University of Maryland Medical System said in a statement. “His condition began deteriorating several days ago. After it became clear that he would not recover, he was given compassionate palliative care. He was able to communicate with his family during his final hours,” the statement said.

The surgery, performed by a team at the University of Maryland Medicine, was among the first to demonstrate the feasibility of a pig-to-human heart transplant, a field made possible by new gene editing tools.

After Bennett was implanted with a pig heart that had been genetically modified to prevent rejection, his son called the procedure “a miracle”. “Before consenting to receive the transplant, Mr Bennett was fully informed of the procedure’s risks, and that the procedure was experimental with unknown risks and benefits,” the hospital said.

READ MORE: US surgeons successfully implant pig heart in human

Pigs have long been a source of potential transplants because their organs are so similar to human organs. A heart at the time of slaughter, for example, is about the size of an adult human heart. Other organs from pigs being researched for transplantation into humans include the kidneys, liver and lungs. Prior efforts at pig-to-human transplants have failed because of genetic differences that caused organ rejection or viruses that posed an infection risk.

Bennett first came to the University of Maryland Medical Center as a patient in October and was placed on a heart-lung bypass machine to keep him alive, but he was deemed ineligible for a conventional heart transplant.

For Bennett, the procedure was his last option. On Dec 31, the US Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency authorisation for the surgery in the hope of saving his life. The transplanted heart performed “very well for several weeks without any signs of rejection,” the hospital said on Wednesday. Bennett’s genetically modified pig heart was provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Virginia.

In the heart implanted in Bennett, three genes previously linked with organ rejection were “knocked out” of the donor pig, and six human genes linked with immune acceptance were inserted into the pig genome. Researchers also deleted a pig gene to prevent excessive growth of the pig heart tissue.