**New Hope for Transplant Patients**
Towana Looney, a US citizen, has received a gene-edited pig kidney. This is the fifth American to get such an organ. Looney had been on dialysis for eight long years.
Looney’s transplant was part of an experiment to find new ways to help people in need of organs. There is a big shortage of transplantable organs in the US. Scientists hope that pig kidneys might one day be used to ease this problem.
Scientists have been working on making animal-to-human transplants successful for decades. They can now edit genes in pigs, which makes it possible to find the best combination of genes for transplantation.