April was a month of world-firsts, new collaborations, and useful data, with a team from Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA) performing the world’s first successful genetically-edited pig kidney transplant, Outset Medical and US Renal Care announcing a new collaboration, and the UK Kidney Association (UKKA) RaDaR study providing new insights into rare kidney diseases.
A recent attempted transplant of a genetically-edited pig kidney has been successfully carried out for the first time at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, USA. The transplant team, led by Leonardo V Riella, Tatsuo Kawai, and Nahel Elias (all Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA), transplanted the genetically-edited pig kidney with 69 genomic edits was successfully transplanted into a living patient after a four-hour-long surgery.
CX Executive Board members Nicholas Inston (Birmingham, UK) and Kate Steiner (Stevenage, UK) discuss some of the highlights of this year’s CX vascular access and renal interventions programmes.
Outset Medical and US Renal Care announced via press release a multi-year agreement to help accelerate home haemodialysis in the USA.
A first-time presentation of five-year data from the IN.PACT AV Access study evaluating the IN.PACT AV (Medtronic) drug-coated balloon (DCB) on the first day of the Charing Cross (CX) Symposium (23–25 April 2024, London, UK) led principal investigator and CX co-chair Andrew Holden (Auckland City Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand) to conclude that “we know which DCB to use” now.
NYU Langone Health announced via press release that a team of surgeons have performed the first-ever combined mechanical heart pump and gene-edited pig kidney transplant surgery in a 54-year-old woman with heart and kidney failure—an advancement that NYU Langone Health states “showcases the possibility and hope of modern medicine”.
In a recent paper published in March 2024 in The Lancet, Katie Wong (Department of Renal Medicine, University College London, London, UK) et al discuss the results of a longitudinal analysis of the UK National Registry of Rare Kidney Diseases (RaDaR) and what the analysis showed regarding the effects that rare kidney diseases have on chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Dalia Dawoud (Nephrology Associates Medical Group, Azura Vascular Care, Riverside, USA)—the programme chair of the most recent American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology (ASDIN) annual scientific meeting (23–25 February 2024, New Orleans, USA)—sat down with Renal Interventions to discuss what she felt were some of the key highlights of the meeting.
The American Society of Nephrology (ASN) and Home Dialysis University (HDU) launched a collaboration in 2023 to improve nephrology trainees’ knowledge, proficiency, and exposure to home dialysis therapies. Through the collaboration, ASN provided scholarships to 30 fellows to attend an in-person HDU fellows training course and participate in a virtual longitudinal case-based education series led by renowned experts in peritoneal and home haemodialysis.
Novo Nordisk announced via press release the headline results from the kidney outcomes trial FLOW, coming after the decision to stop the trial early due to efficacy that was announced on 10 October 2023, based on a recommendation from an Independent Data Monitoring Committee.
Alik Farber (Boston University, Boston, USA) is set to present the results of a multicentre US study at the 2024 Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery (SCVS) annual meeting (16–20 March, Scottsdale, Arizona) that will show creating arteriovenous fistulas with a vascular external support system, VasQ, decreases the median time to achieve two-needle cannulation by reducing the need to perform maturation procedures.
