Surgeons successfully test pig kidney transplant in human patient

Researchers in US say trial on dead person is a significant step' toward animal-to-human organ transplants

Surgeons have attached a pig's kidney to a human and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but a sugar in their cells, which is foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.