Pig-to-human lung xenotransplantation into a brain-dead recipient

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Data availability

These data are not publicly accessible due to ethical and institutional restrictions safeguarding research subject privacy. De-identified recipient data supporting the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author, subject to ethics and institutional approval. Requests will be reviewed within 2 weeks.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the family of the decedent for their invaluable contribution to the advancement of lung xenotransplantation and scientific research. We also thank the clinical and laboratory teams at the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University and the National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, including the lung xenotransplantation clinical team (Y. Zeng, J. Mao, L. Wang, W. Shen, J. Zhang, T. Xing, Y. Xue, J. Fan, Y. Ouyang and X. Zhang), the nursing team (Y. Chen, D. Huang, R. Li, X. Li, M. Kuang and X. Li), anesthesiologist Y. Zhou, laboratory staff (W. Wang, L. Liu, Z. Huang and M. Yu) and the organ procurement organization personnel (L. Wang, L. Wang, Y. Wang and K. Li) for their unwavering support. We acknowledge L. Burdorf and C. Laird’s team for their pioneering work on NHP lung xenotransplantation, which inspired this research, particularly in the experimental design.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jianxing He, Jiang Shi, Chao Yang, Guilin Peng, Chunrong Ju.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thoracic Surgery and Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Jianxing He, Jiang Shi, Chao Yang, Guilin Peng, Yi Zhao, Hengrui Liang & Xin Xu

  2. Department of Organ Transplantation, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Jianxing He, Jiang Shi, Chao Yang, Guilin Peng, Chunrong Ju, Chuanbao Chen, Menyang Liu, Xiaoyou Liu & Xin Xu

  3. Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Hui Liu

  4. Department of Pathology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Ping He

  5. Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Xiaoqing Liu

  6. Department of Emergency Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Zuopeng Zhang & Weiqing Huang

  7. Chengdu Clonorgan Biotechnology Co. Ltd, Chengdu, China

    Dengke Pan

  8. State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease & National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Zifeng Yang & Wenda Guang

  9. Animal Experiment Center, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease & National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, National Clinical Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China

    Hongtao Li

  10. Institute of Organ Transplantation, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Zhonghua Chen

  11. Key Laboratory of Organ Transplantation, Ministry of Education; NHC Key Laboratory of Organ Transplantation; Key Laboratory of Organ Transplantation, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Wuhan, China

    Zhonghua Chen

  12. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Kyeongman Jeon

  13. Department of Thoracic Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

    Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa

  14. Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    A. Justin Rucker

  15. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

    Amos Lal

  16. Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, National Center for Respiratory Medicine, Guangzhou, China

    Nanshan Zhong

  17. Guangzhou National Laboratory, Guangzhou, China

    Nanshan Zhong

  18. Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, National Center for Respiratory Medicine, Guangzhou, China

    Nanshan Zhong

  19. National Clinical Eye Research Center of Eye Hospital and Institute for Clinical Data Science, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Kang Zhang

  20. Institute for AI in Medicine and Faculty of Medicine, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China

    Kang Zhang

Authors

  1. Jianxing He
  2. Jiang Shi
  3. Chao Yang
  4. Guilin Peng
  5. Chunrong Ju
  6. Yi Zhao
  7. Hui Liu
  8. Ping He
  9. Xiaoqing Liu
  10. Zuopeng Zhang
  11. Chuanbao Chen
  12. Dengke Pan
  13. Zifeng Yang
  14. Wenda Guang
  15. Hongtao Li
  16. Zhonghua Chen
  17. Menyang Liu
  18. Hengrui Liang
  19. Weiqing Huang
  20. Kyeongman Jeon
  21. Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa
  22. A. Justin Rucker
  23. Amos Lal
  24. Nanshan Zhong
  25. Kang Zhang
  26. Xiaoyou Liu
  27. Xin Xu

Contributions

J.H., J.S., C.Y., G.P., C.J., H.L., P.H., X.L., Z.Z., C.C., D.P., Z.Y., W.G., H.T.L., Z.C., M.L., H.R.L., Y.Z., W.H., K.J., T.F.C.-Y., A.J.R., A.L., X.L. and X.X. contributed to the conception and design of the study. J.S., C.Y., G.P., C.J., H.L., P.H., X.L., Z.Z., C.C., D.P., Z.Y., W.G., H.T.L., Z.C., M.L., H.R.L., Y.Z. and W.H. performed the data collection and analysis. J.H., X.L. and X.X. supervised the project. J.H., J.S., C.Y., G.P., X.L. and X.X. drafted the manuscript, with critical revisions from J.H., K.Z., J.S., X.L., Y.Z., N.Z. and X.X. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jianxing He, Xiaoyou Liu or Xin Xu.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

D.P. is a co-founder of Chengdu Clonorgan Biotechnology Co. Ltd, Chengdu, China. The other authors declare competing interests.

Peer review

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Nature Medicine thanks Hidetaka Hara and Eckhard Wolf for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Michael Basson, in collaboration with the Nature Medicine team.

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He, J., Shi, J., Yang, C. et al. Pig-to-human lung xenotransplantation into a brain-dead recipient. Nat Med 31, 3388–3393 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03861-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-03861-x