Optipharm, a company specializing in biotechnology, said on Tuesday that a monkey transplanted with a pig's kidney achieved a survival record of 221 days, which is approximately twice as many days of the previous domestic survival record of 114 days.

The results demonstrate the possibility of entering the clinical field of solid organ transplantation in Korea. Previous cases using heterologous cells and tissues including cornea and pancreas, have exceeded the clinical milestone of 180 days but this is the first time that solid organs such as the kidney and heart have achieved such a milestone.

"The primate transplanted with a pig kidney maintained normal range kidney function with stable feeding and vitality until death based on the assessment of indicators such as creatinine, blood, urea, nitrogen (BUN), and inflammation,” said an official from Optipharm.

“At around 200 days, these indicators began to rise sharply, and we plan to analyze the cause through autopsy.”

Kidneys, in particular, are the most in-demand organs, accounting for 60 percent of the approximately 50,000 patients waiting for organ transplants in Korea.  

Consequently, the company will start additional experiments to confirm reproducibility at the end of this month. If the second experiment with the same protocol shows similar results to the previous experiment, it is expected that the clinical potential of heterologous kidneys will be further enhanced. 

According to the International Xenotransplantation Association (IXA) guidelines, to enter clinical trials, four out of six primates must survive for more than six months and one of them must survive for more than one year using the same experimental protocol.

"It is encouraging that the overall average survival days of xenogeneic kidney transplant recipients are increasing," said Optipharm CEO Kim Hyun-il. "After analyzing the results of more than 50 primate experiments with big data in the past six years, the survival days have increased significantly since the last year when triple knock-out (TKO) pigs, pigs missing three pig genes, were introduced.”

Optipharm said that it will also begin nonclinical studies in heterologous pancreas starting next month. Subsequently, pancreatic cells from quadruple knock-out (QKO) transgenic pigs will be transplanted into primates to obtain clinical data and file for clinical trials within the next year.