When it comes to saving lives for people with kidney disease, a transplant surgeon says the math does not add up.

“When you think about 37 million Americans with chronic kidney disease, and at any given time six to 800,000 have actual kidney failure, and we only waitlist 80 to 100,000, and we only transplant 25,000,” Jayme E. Locke with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Heersink School of Medicine said.

Researchers at that school are some of the first to fill the need with xenotransplantation.

“The goal is to sort of really basically eliminate that gap between supply and demand,” Locke said. “In our case, we're hoping to do that with pig organs. Interestingly, pigs actually have kidney function that's quite similar to human."

Researchers use a CRISPR, a genetic editing tool, to edit out genes that would cause a human body to reject the organ.

“It kind of tricks the human immune system into thinking it's something from a human,” Locke said.

Because pigs can live 30 years, researchers believe the organ will last that long for humans — and they hope to use more organs from pigs to get more people on and off the transplant waiting list. 

Several pig organ transplant recipients have died in recent months following their operation. It's important to remember that xenotransplantation is still very much in the experimental stages, but researchers are committed to perfecting this alternative source of organs when human organs are not available.

The next step will be a clinical trial to seek FDA approval.  

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