In a first, pig liver transplanted into living cancer patient in China

First in the world, a man suffering from severe liver cancer got his liver transplanted by a pig's liver. Chinese doctors said they transplanted a gene-edited pig's liver into the living man.

This has been regarded as a milestone in animal-to-human transplants, a process known as xenotransplantation.

Anhui Medical University's First Affilated Hospital in it's WeChat account on May 24, said that a 71-year-old man with liver cancer received the organ on May 17.

The university, as per a report by South China Morning Post, said that the patient "was able to walk freely, no hyper-acute or acute rejection reactions were found, the coagulation system was not impaired, and liver function had returned to normal".

The pig's liver was 514 grams and contained 10 gene edits to prevent organ rejection and dysfunction. The pig's liver was transplanted into the patient after doctors confirmed the left lobe of his liver was unable to function properly on its own and wasn't responding to other treatments.

The transplanted pig liver secretes about 200 ml of golden bile every day, People’s Daily quoted the hospital’s director Sun Beicheng as saying.

Another achievement surgery in March was when a Chinese team from Air Force Medical University transplanted the first gene-edited pig’s liver into a patient who had suffered brain death.

Also in March, a patient in the US was the first in the world to receive a gene-modified pig’s kidney in a transplant, a procedure previously performed only on clinically dead patients. Although the patient died in May, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said that there were no signs indicating that the man died because of the transplant.