The transplant came after about a decade of earlier studies and transplants by Wang and his team of gene-edited organs from pigs into monkeys, including a pig heart, kidney, cornea, and bone. The group also performed a skin transplant using gene-edit pig skin into a person with severe burns.

A genetically modified porcine liver has been successfully transplanted into a human subject, constituting a historic precedent in the field of organ transplantation. The liver demonstrated functional viability for a period of 10 days within the body of a brain-dead patient,

Chinese researchers are reporting new steps in the quest for animal-to-human organ transplants. Researchers at Xijing Hospital in China say a pig kidney transplant recipient continues to recover nearly three weeks after that surgery.