“A kidney transplant…is extraordinarily powerful,” said Jayme Locke, M.D., MPH, director of the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute (CTI), in a recent episode of ‘The Checkup’ podcast. “So is a liver, a heart, a lung—they all change people's lives. They all give life back.”

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine announces today the first peer-reviewed research outlining the successful transplant of genetically modified, clinical-grade pig kidneys into a brain-dead human individual, replacing the recipient’s native kidneys. These positive results demonstrate how xenotransplantation could address the worldwide organ shortage crisis.

UAB Medicine patient Kevin Russell received a kidney transplant in 1991 at the age of 27. This life-giving operation helped him live almost two more decades, to the age of 45, leading his family to make a legacy gift to the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute in 2020.

Four years ago, 28-year-old Ana Kenney was told that she would either spend the rest of her life on dialysis or have to wait up to 10 years for a kidney transplant.