THURSDAY, March 27, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- A Chinese woman is the third person in the world living with a gene-edited pig kidney, and nearly three weeks after surgery, doctors say she’s doing well.

The woman, reportedly 69 years old, had kidney failure for eight years before receiving the pig kidney.

The operation took place at Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an. Lin Wang, part of the transplant team, said the kidney is working well and the patient is still being monitored in the hospital, a report from NBC News says.

This surgery is part of a growing effort to use genetically altered pig organs to help deal with a shortage of human organs for transplant.

So far, four people have received pig kidneys and two received a pig heart. Some of those early surgeries had poor outcomes, but two other recent kidney recipients -- one woman in Alabama and a man in New Hampshire -- are both doing well, NBC News reported.

Wang and his team are also testing pig livers. In a study published March 26 in the journal Nature, they reported implanting a pig liver into a brain-dead person. The liver survived for 10 days and showed early signs of working.

What's more, it made bile and albumin, which are important for liver function, although in smaller amounts that an actual human liver. In theory, Wang said, that could still help support someone with liver failure.

U.S. scientists have tested a similar idea by hooking up a pig liver outside the body to help filter blood, much like a dialysis machine.

“It’s hopefully a first step but it’s still, a lot like any good research, more questions than answers,” said Dr. Parsia Vagefi, a liver transplant surgeon at UT Southwestern Medical Center who wasn’t involved with the work.

Wang said his team has also tried replacing a human liver completely with a pig liver in another brain-dead person and is now studying the results.

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more on xenotransplantation.

SOURCE: NBC News, March 26, 2025