An Alabama girl who’s the one residing recipient of a pig organ transplant handed a significant milestone on Saturday when she grew to become the longest residing particular person with a functioning pig organ.
Towana Looney, 53, stays wholesome and stuffed with power, reaching the document 61-day mark along with her pig kidney on Saturday.
“I’m superwoman,” Looney advised The Related Press. “It’s a brand new tackle life.”
Solely 4 different People have acquired experimental transplants of gene-edited pig organs — two receiving a coronary heart whereas the opposite two acquired a kidney — however none of them lived greater than two months.
WOMAN RECEIVES PIG KIDNEY TRANSPLANT, WALKS OUT OF HOSPITAL DAYS LATER: ‘SECOND CHANCE’
Towana Looney, who acquired a pig kidney transplant in November 2024, goes over notes about her restoration with Dr. Jeffrey Stern at NYU Langone Health in New York, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (AP)
“Should you noticed her on the road, you’ll don’t know that she’s the one particular person on the earth strolling round with a pig organ inside them that’s functioning,” Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who led Looney’s transplant, stated.
Montgomery stated Looney’s kidney operate is “completely regular.” She has been staying in New York briefly so she will obtain post-transplant checkups, however docs hope she will return to her house in Gadsden, Alabama, in a few month.
“We’re fairly optimistic that that is going to proceed to work and work properly for, you realize, a major time period,” Montgomery stated.
Scientists are genetically altering pigs, so their organs are extra human-like to assist a extreme scarcity of human organs that can be utilized for transplants.
Greater than 100,000 individuals are on the U.S. transplant checklist. Most of those people want a kidney, and hundreds die ready.
The Food and Drug Administration solely permits pig organ transplants in particular circumstances for individuals who have run out of different alternate options.
Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts Common Hospital, who led the world’s first pig kidney transplant final 12 months and works with one other pig developer, eGenesis, stated how properly Looney does is a “very valuable expertise.”

Towana Looney sits for an NYU Langone Health press convention on Tuesday, December 17, 2024. (Fox Information)
Looney was far more healthy than earlier pig organ recipients, based on Kawai, who stated her progress will assist inform docs about future makes an attempt.
“We now have to be taught from one another,” he stated.
Looney donated a kidney to her mom in 1999 and later being pregnant issues brought about hypertension that broken her remaining kidney, which finally failed, a uncommon circumstance amongst residing donors.
She spent eight years on dialysis earlier than docs decided she was unlikely to obtain a donated organ, as she had developed very excessive ranges of antibodies abnormally primed to assault one other human kidney.
Looney, in search of another, wished to check out the pig organ experiment. No person knew how it might work in somebody “extremely sensitized” with the overactive antibodies.
Montgomery’s group has intently tracked Looney’s restoration via blood assessments and different measurements for the reason that Nov. 25 surgical procedure. About three weeks after the transplant, delicate indicators have been detected that rejection was starting. They knew to search for these indicators due to a 2023 experiment when a pig kidney labored for 61 days inside a deceased man whose physique was donated for analysis.
MASSACHUSETTS MAN, RECIPIENT OF FIRST SUCCESSFUL PIG KIDNEY TRANSPLANT, IS DISCHARGED FROM HOSPITAL

Outdoors the NYU Langone Health emergency room entrance on April 6, 2020, in New York Metropolis. (Noam Galai/Getty Photographs)
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Montgomery stated his group efficiently handled Looney and there haven’t been indicators of rejection since.
It’s inconceivable to foretell how lengthy Looney’s new kidney will work. But when it have been to fail, she might obtain dialysis once more.
“The reality is we don’t actually know what the subsequent hurdles are as a result of that is the primary time we’ve gotten this far,” Montgomery stated. “We’ll must proceed to actually preserve a detailed eye on her.”
The Related Press contributed to this report.