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.

Looney is recuperating well after her transplant, which was announced Tuesday.

She was discharged from the hospital just 11 days after surgery to continue recovery in a nearby apartment although temporarily readmitted this week while her medications are adjusted.

Doctors expect her to return home to 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 Nov. 25 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 human-like.

Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999.

Later a complication during pregnancy 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 donor offered.

Then Looney heard about pig kidney research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and told Locke, at the time a UAB transplant surgeon, she’d like to try one.

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 donor offered.

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.