An Alabama woman has passed a milestone to become the longest-living recipient of a pig organ transplant.

Towana Looney, 53, suffered from kidney failure for eight years before deciding to undergo the groundbreaking surgery. Like other patients who have had pig kidney or heart transplants, this was her last hope after years of waiting for a human organ to be donated without success.

Ironically, Looney had donated a kidney to her mother in 1999. But then, during her pregnancy, she suffered serious complications, leading to high blood pressure and eventually kidney failure. Since December 2016, she has had to undergo dialysis three times a week for four hours each time to stay alive.

Although she has been on the kidney transplant waiting list since 2017, because her body has such high antibody levels, it is almost impossible to find a suitable kidney.

In late 2024, under the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Humanitarian Use program, Ms. Looney was approved to receive a gene-edited pig kidney transplant.

Towana Looney is taken into surgery.

On November 25, 2024, Ms. Looney officially became the third person in the world to receive a pig kidney transplant. The 7-hour surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center was successful, placing the pig kidney into Ms. Looney's body.

After 11 days, on December 6, 2024, she was discharged and moved to an apartment near the hospital for observation. For the first 3 months, she needed to go to the hospital for daily checkups to monitor her immune response. Doctors said she would likely need lifelong immunosuppressant treatment to avoid kidney rejection.

"No one knows how long this kidney will last, " Dr. Montgomery said. "We hope it will last a long time, but this is still an unexplored area."

Towana Looney after receiving a pig kidney transplant

Previously, no patient had survived more than two months. The world's first pig kidney transplant was performed in March 2024 at Massachusetts General Hospital, USA, on patient Richard Slayman (62 years old) - who had end-stage renal failure due to diabetes and high blood pressure. The pig kidney in this case was edited with 69 gene points by the biotechnology company eGenesis. Doctors had predicted that the kidney could function for at least two years. However, after only 48 days, on May 11, 2024, Mr. Slayman suddenly passed away. The cause of death has not been announced, but the hospital confirmed that there was no sign of a connection to the kidney transplant.

"She's doing so well, " said Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Institute for Transplant Research, who performed the surgery . "If you saw her on the street, you wouldn't think she was the only person in the world living with a functioning pig kidney."

Towana Looney's dramatic recovery is a morale booster for efforts to make animal-to-human organ transplants a reality.

As of January 30, 2025, Ms. Looney has lived 67 days with a genetically edited pig kidney, officially becoming the longest-surviving animal organ transplant patient in history.

"I walk a lot, sometimes up to 10 blocks a day. Before the transplant, I was always tired, nauseous, and had no appetite. But now, I feel hungry every hour," Towana Looney shared. After being discharged from the hospital, Looney enjoyed life by walking, shopping, and exploring Manhattan.

Xenotransplantation is a new field in medicine that hopes to address the shortage of donated organs. However, previous heart and kidney transplants from pigs to humans have not been successful in the long term, with patients not surviving more than two months after surgery.

Medical experts are constantly researching to find out the causes and ways to overcome the risks in the process of transplanting animal organs into the human body. Research and testing of animal organ transplants continue with the hope of opening up the chance of life for millions of patients with organ failure around the world.