Pig Kidneys Could Surpass Human Donors, Says Transplant Surgeon

A leading surgeon behind a clinical trial of transplanting pig kidneys into living humans has said they could one day be superior to those from human donors.

Dr. Robert Montgomery, the director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, said the first transplant of the trial has already been carried out,with another expected in January. Six patients are initially expected to recieve the pig organs, which have been gene-edited in 10 places to reduce rejection by the human body.

Should the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) give approval, the trial will be expanded to involve 44 further transplants.

The approach, called xenotransplantation, aims to solve the shortage of human organs.

According to the NHS Blood and transplant,in the UK alone,more than 12,000 people have died or been removed from the transplant waiting list over the past 10 years before receiving a new organ.

Participants in the new trial are either ineligible for human kidney transplantation or on a waiting list but thought to be more likely to die,or remain un-transplanted,within five years than receive an organ.

“The truth is that there’s just never going to be enough human organs,” Montgomery told the Guardian.

He speaks from experience. He is not only a pioneering transplant surgeon and one of Time Magazine’s most influential people of 2025, but he also inherited a heart condition called dilated cardiomyopathy, which killed his father and brother. After Montgomery experienced seven cardiac arrests – one of which resulted in a month-long coma – he received a heart transplant himself in 2018.

“I think everybody really knows that we have a terrible problem in terms of rationing organs because there’s such a scarcity of supply. But unless you’ve walked in the shoes of somebody who’s waiting for a transplant, you don’t really fully understand how unlikely it is indeed that you’re going to receive a transplant in time,” he said.

montgomery has pioneered new approaches to increasing