Novelist Rose Senehi peeks into the window of a flood-damaged shop on Main Street in Chimney Rock Village, N.C., on Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
as prior patients, boosted the field — thriving for now 2½ months after a pig kidney transplant at NYU Langone Health in November.Doctors are moving from those one-off experiments to more formal studies. As they monitor Andrews’ recovery, doctors at Mass General Brigham have Food and Drug Administration permission to perform two additional transplants in their pilot study, using gene-edited pig kidneys supplied by biotech eGenesis.
And United Therapeutics, another developer of gene-edited pig organs, just won FDA approval for the world’s first clinical trial of xenotransplantation. Initially, six patients will receive pig kidneys — and if they fare well over six months, up to 50 additional patients will receive transplants.“This is uncharted territory,” said Mass General’s Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, who led both Andrews’ surgery and the world’s first pig kidney transplant last year. But with lessons from animal research and the prior human attempts, he said, “I’m very optimistic. And hopefully we can get to survival, kidney survival, for over two years.”so their organs are more humanlike to address the transplant shortage. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting.
Andrews’ kidneys abruptly failed about two years ago, and the Concord, New Hampshire, grandfather struggled with fatigue and complications from dialysis. He’s on the transplant list but doctors warned it was a long shot. It can take seven years or more for people with Andrews’ blood type to find a matching kidney. Meanwhile, people slowly get sicker on dialysis — five-year survival is about 50% — and Andrews already had had a heart attack.“I have seen my mortality and I was ready to fight,” Andrews said. So he asked Mass General if he could get a pig kidney instead. “I told them. ‘Anything, I’ll do anything. You give me a list of things you want me to do and I’ll do it.’”
Mass General transplant nephrologist Dr. Leonardo Riella said Andrews was weak and struggling with diabetes, including a slow-healing diabetic foot ulcer that hindered walking. He’d have to get more fit to be a candidate.
Andrews started physical therapy and returned six months later about 30 pounds lighter and “running down the hallway almost,” Riella recalled. “He was just, you know, a different person,” so they started checking if he’d qualify for the pilot study.“We’re starting to believe those who think differently, vote differently or pray differently, whether they are across the ocean or sitting right next to us, are not just wrong — we mistakenly see them as evil,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Dr. Abraham Verghese, a bestselling author and Stanford University expert on infectious diseases, opened his keynote address by saying he felt like a medieval messenger “slipping into a besieged community.” He praised Harvard for “courageously defending the essential values of this university and indeed of this nation,” and told students that more people than they realize have noticed the example they’ve set.“No recent events can diminish what each of you have accomplished here,” Verghese said.
On Wednesday, basketball Hall of Famer and activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the “Class Day” speaker, praising Harvard for standing up to the Trump administration and comparing Garber’s response to Rosa Parks’ stand against racist segregation.Hall of Fame center and honorary degree recipient Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is welcomed at Harvard Yard during commencement ceremonies at Harvard University, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)