Dr. Robert Montgomery and his team set off a series of advances with the transplant of a pig kidney to a human.
IMAGE: JOE CARROTTA
Since September 25, 2021, when Robert Montgomery, MD, DPhil, and the NYU Langone Transplant Institute team performed the first xenotransplant of a genetically modified pig kidney to a human, there have been a series of surgical breakthroughs, as recounted by The New Yorker in a look at the key figures moving the field forward today.
Dr. Montgomery, himself a hepatitis C–positive heart transplant recipient, was excited to hear about the first pig-to-human heart transplant by the University of Maryland. “It was stunning. It was incredibly inspiring and exciting, and my nieces and kids called me. It was very personal in that way,” he says.
In discussing the two successful pig-to-human kidney transplants conducted at NYU Langone in fall 2021, The New Yorker also wanted to know what brought Dr. Montgomery to this point in his long, pathbreaking career as an innovative transplant surgeon and immunology researcher—from his recording-breaking domino pairing surgeries to his struggle with heart disease.
Read more from The New Yorker.
