US patient who received first successful genetically modified pig kidney transplant dies

Richard Slayman, the world's first patient to successfully receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died in the United States at the age of 62, Associated Press reports.

Sleiman underwent a pig kidney transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in March 2024 and was discharged two weeks later. At the time, surgeons said the transplanted kidney would last at least two years. Before that, he had been living with a human donor kidney since 2018, but it failed five years later.

Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital expressed their condolences to Sleiman's family, but stressed that they saw no signs that the man died as a result of the transplant.

"The doctors' tremendous efforts to perform the xenotransplantation gave our family seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories of that time will remain in our minds and hearts," the Sleiman family said in a statement.

Previously, pig kidneys were transplanted only to patients diagnosed with brain death, AP recalls. Two patients also received a genetically modified pig heart transplant, but both died from complications within months of the surgery.