An Alabama woman is doing well after the latest experimental pig kidney transplant

NEW YORK (AP) — An Alabama woman is recovering well after a pig kidney transplant last month that freed her from eight years of dialysis, the latest effort to save human lives with animal organs.

Towana Looney is the fifth American given a gene-edited pig organ — and notably, she isn’t as sick as prior recipients who died within two months of receiving a pig kidney or heart.

“It’s like a new beginning,” Looney, 53, told The Associated Press. Right away, “the energy I had was amazing. To have a working kidney — and to feel it — is unbelievable.”

Looney’s surgery marks an important step as scientists get ready for formal studies of xenotransplantation expected to begin next year, said Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who led the highly experimental procedure on Nov. 25.

On Tuesday, NYU announced that Looney is recuperating well. She was discharged from the hospital just 11 days after surgery although she was temporarily readmitted this week to adjust her medications. Doctors expect her to return home to Gadsden, Alabama, in three months. If the pig kidney were to fail, she could begin dialysis again.

“To see hope restored to her and her family is extraordinary,” said Dr. Jayme Locke, Looney's original surgeon who secured Food and Drug Administration permission for the transplant.

More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney. Thousands die waiting and many more who need a transplant never qualify. Now, searching for an alternate supply, scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more humanlike.

Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999. Later pregnancy complications caused high blood pressure that damaged her remaining kidney, which eventually failed. It’s incredibly rare for living donors to develop kidney failure although those who do are given extra priority on the transplant list.

But Looney couldn't get a match — she had developed antibodies abnormally primed to attack another human kidney. Tests showed she’d reject every kidney donors have offered.

Then Looney heard about pig kidney research at t he University of Alabama at Birmingham and told Locke, at the time a UAB transplant surgeon, she'd like to try one. In April 2023, Locke filed an FDA application seeking an emergency experiment, under rules for people like Looney who are out of options.

The FDA didn't agree right away. Instead, the world's first gene-edited pig kidney transplants went to two sicker patients last spring, at Massachusetts General Hospital and NYU. Both also had serious heart disease. The Boston patient recovered enough to spend about a month at home before dying of sudden cardiac arrest deemed unrelated to the pig kidney. NYU’s patient had heart complications that damaged her pig kidney, forcing its removal, and she later died.

Those disappointing outcomes didn’t dissuade Looney, who was starting to feel worse on dialysis but, Locke said, hadn't developed heart disease or other complications. The FDA eventually allowed her transplant at NYU, where Locke collaborated with Montgomery.

Moments after Montgomery sewed the pig kidney into place, it turned a healthy pink and began producing urine.

Even if her new organ fails, doctors can learn from it, Looney told the AP: “You don't know if it's going to work or not until you try.”

Blacksburg, Virginia-based Revivicor provided Looney’s new kidney from a pig with 10 gene alterations. Its parent company, United Therapeutics said Tuesday it plans to file an application with the FDA “very soon” to begin clinical trials with that type of kidney.

Looney was initially discharged on Dec. 6, wearing monitors to track her blood pressure, heart rate and other bodily functions and returning to the hospital for daily checkups before her medication readmission. Doctors scrutinize her bloodwork and other tests, comparing them to prior research in animals and a few humans in hopes of spotting an early warning if problems crop up.

“A lot of what we’re seeing, we’re seeing for the first time,” Montgomery said.

Locke, who recently joined the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, visited last week to check her longtime patient's progress. Looney hugged her, saying, “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

“Never,” Locke responded.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The gene-edited pig kidney moments after blood vessels are reattached and the organ is reperfused with Towana Looney’s blood at NYU Langone Health in New York City on Nov. 25, 2024. (Joe Carrotta/NYU Langone Health via AP)

The gene-edited pig kidney is removed from its package in the operating room at NYU Langone Health in New York City on Nov. 25, 2024. (Joe Carrotta for NYU Langone Health via AP)

Kryscilla J. Yang, MD, clinical instructor for the NYU Langone Transplant Institute (from left) and Robert Montgomery, MD, DPhil, the H. Leon Pachter, MD, Professor of Surgery, chair of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine Department of Surgery, and director of the NYU Langone transplant Institute,bprepare patient Towana Looney to receive a gene-edited pig kidney at NYU Langone Health in New York City on Nov. 25, 2024. (Joe Carrotta/NYU Langone Health via AP)

Robert Montgomery, MD, DPhil, the H. Leon Pachter, MD, Professor of Surgery, chair of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine Department of Surgery, and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, reviews a monitor during the gene-edited pig kidney transplant surgery at NYU Langone Health in New York City on Nov. 25, 2024. (Joe Carrotta/NYU Langone Health via AP)

Pig kidney recipient Towana Looney sits with transplant surgeons Dr. Jayme Locke on Dec. 10, 2024, at NYU Langone Health, in New York City. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Pig kidney recipient Towana Looney is visited by Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, center, on Dec. 10, 2024, at NYU Langone Health, in New York City. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Pig kidney recipient Towana Looney stands with transplant surgeons Dr. Jayme Locke, left, now of the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration and Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, center, on Dec. 10, 2024, at NYU Langone Health, in New York City. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service leveled criminal charges against him. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the attack.

Kirillov, 54, was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.”

The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the U.S. State Department said that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in World War I, against Ukrainian troops.

Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.

Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.

The bomb used in Tuesday's attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork.

The SBU official provided video that they said was of the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building shortly before a blast fills the frame.

Russia’s top state investigative agency said it's looking into Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, described the attack as an attempt by Kyiv to distract public attention from its military failures and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership will face inevitable retribution.”

In the past year, Russia has been on the front foot in the war, grinding deeper into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine despite heavy losses. Ukraine tried to change the dynamic with an incursion into Russia's Kursk region, but it has continued to slowly lose ground on its own territory.

Since Russia invaded, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks believed to have been carried out by Ukraine.

Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in a 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. A Russian woman, who said she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

In December 2023, Illia Kyva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.

On Dec. 9, a bomb planted under a car in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed Sergei Yevsyukov, the former head of the Olenivka Prison where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022. One other person was injured in the blast. Russian authorities said they detained a suspect in the attack.

Associated Press writer Illia Novikov contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistantIlya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigators work near a scooter at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

A view of the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistantIlya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigators work near a scooter at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Workers load a body of Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces into a bus after he and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant, seen at left, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant, seen at lower center, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators stand near the body of Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces after he and his assistant were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, center, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant, right, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, right, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Feb. 28, 2023, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov speaks during a briefing in Moscow, Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces was killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

A body lies at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces was killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigates work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces was killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

FILE - Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the Russian military's radiation, chemical and biological protection unit, attends a briefing in Kubinka Patriot park, outside Moscow, Russia, on June 22, 2018. (AP Photo, File)