Glossary / Life sciences and medicine
Graft survival
A transplanted organ or tissue continuing to work in the recipient without being rejected. How long it lasts is the usual measure of success.
Transplants are judged by how long the organ keeps working. Human-to-human kidney transplants now often last more than ten years. The main threat is rejection, held down with immunosuppressive drugs while balancing the risk of infection.
For genetically modified pig kidneys, the first transplant into a living patient took place in the United States in 2024, and its course was reported in a paper[1]. Graft survival has since stretched to months, but remains far short of human transplants. For now the realistic role is as a bridge, buying time off dialysis.
Related terms
- XenotransplantationTransplanting organs or tissues from animals into humans. Today the main candidates are kidneys and hearts from genetically modified pigs.
- Antibody-mediated rejectionRejection in which the recipient produces antibodies against a transplanted organ, and those antibodies attack the organ's blood vessels and gradually impair it.
- ImmunosuppressionUsing drugs to weaken the immune system so that it does not reject a transplanted organ.