A gene-edited pig’s heart has been transplanted into a human for the first time

According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, 17 people die every day while on the US transplant waiting list.

Bennett is expected to come out of the heart-lung bypass machine today, but he will be closely monitored for any signs of rejection or infections over the next few weeks.

New technologies are making it more viable to transplant animal organs into humans, while the process has a long and often unsuccessful history. Revivicor, one of several companies working to develop pig organs to transplant into humans, supplied the gene-edited pig in last week's operation.

Revivicor was behind a successful pig's kidneys transplant into a human patient last October, which was a major milestone in proving the viability of its techniques. George Church, a Harvard scientist, co-founded a company called eGensisis, which is working on using CRISPR gene-editing to make animal organs viable for human transplant, but his ambitious proposed timescale has fallen by the wayside.