(NewsNation) — In a scientific first, surgeons have transplanted a lung from a pig to a human recipient and found that it functioned for more than a week.

First published in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers in China reported how they transplanted the left lung from a donor pig with six genetic modifications into a 39-year-old brain-dead male recipient.

For nine days, the lung did not trigger an infection or hyperacute rejection, which is a rapid, violent immune response by the recipient's body.

These studies are often carried out on brain-dead recipients before living patients as a temporary, controlled model to test the functionality and immune response to genetically modified pig organs.

The work is the latest development in a technique called xenotransplantation, which is be

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