In 2013, scientists performed the first pig-to-monkey liver transplant. Previous studies into kidney and heart transplants from pigs to humans have also been successful.

Pigs are being explored as donors because they’re readily available and have similar-sized anatomy. ... No one knows how long a pig liver would last on the machine while hooked up to a person.

In 2013, they successfully performed the first pig-to-monkey heterotopic auxiliary liver transplantation in China. Both the recipient monkey and the transplanted liver survived for 14 days.

Surgeons externally attached a pig liver to a brain-dead human body and watched it successfully filter blood, a step toward eventually trying the technique in patients with liver failure.

A genetically modified mini pig’s liver was able to function in the body of a brain-dead patient throughout a 10-day experiment.

Working with the liver “is so difficult,” Wang said. “We all know the function of the liver is so complicated.” Replacing a human organ with a pig’s is complicated, said Dr. Shimul Shah ...

Researchers will soon test whether livers from a gene-edited pig could treat people with sudden liver failure — by temporarily filtering their blood so their own organ can rest and maybe heal.

For three days, the man’s blood passed into the machine, through the pig liver, and back into his body. This “extracorporeal,” or outside-the-body, liver—whose initial test was announced ...

This is the first time, however, a pig liver has been transplanted into a human. Rafael Matesanz, founder of the National Transplant Organisation in Spain, said: ‘This is the world’s first ...

Surgeons externally attached a pig liver to a brain-dead human body and watched it successfully filter blood, a step toward eventually trying the technique in patients with liver failure.

Doctors in China have become the first to report details about a transplant of a genetically modified pig liver into a human. The liver was transplanted last year into a person who was brain-dead ...