Written By: N. Lothungbeni Humtsoe | Updated : August 26, 2025 3:30 PM IST
For the first time, Chinese surgeons announced on Monday the successful transplantation of a pig lung into a 39-year-old brain-dead male human recipient following a brain haemorrhage. The case, which is published in Nature Medicine, revealed that although the transplantation, which took place in May 2024 in Guangzhou, was short-lived, it was found to function for nine days.
The findings published in the medical journal also revealed that the transplantation procedure was done through a technique called xenotransplantation, which is aimed at solving the organ shortage crisis.
Andrew Fisher, a professor of respiratory transplant medicine at Newcastle University, tells a leading media outlet, "This work is very welcome in furthering our understanding, but it marks an incremental step forward. There is much more work required, and we are not on the dawn of an era of lung xenotransplantation using pig lungs."
According to ScienceDirectxenotransplantation is a procedure that grafts or transplants an organ or tissue between members of different species. The World Health Organisation (WHO) 2022 data indicate that more than 150,000 solid organ transplants are performed worldwide annually, representing a 52% increase compared to 2010.
Explaining the physiological similarity between pigs and humans, ScienceDirect explains, "Although monkeys and baboons are most phylogenetically like humans, given the ecological and ethical restrictions, the pig is the only animal available to replace human tissues. The pig is physiologically similar to humans and organ size is comparable; it can be raised in controlled environments and, more importantly, genetically modified."
The best advantage of xenotransplantation is its unlimited supply and elective availability of donor organs, expansion of the candidate pool, and avoidance of the detrimental effects of brain death on donor organ function.
Talking about the challenges of xenotransplantation, Fisher added, "Every breath you breathe in is bringing the external environment into the body. So the immune system in the lung is very sensitive and very active, which means when you're dealing with organ transplantation, where you know you don't want the immune system to be very active, it poses extra challenges."
Scientists outline that the main side effects of xenotransplantation are rejection, including hyperacute, acute, and chronic vascular rejection, and the risk of transmitting zoonoses. However, ScienceDirect explains, "The development of genetically-modified pigs has allowed for the expression of human antigens that can reduce the risk of rejection and provide hope for future feasibility."
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