CNN —Lisa Pisano, the first person to receive a mechanical heart pump as well as a gene-edited pig kidney, died Sunday, according to NYU Langone Health, where she had the surgery. Her case was the first reported organ transplant in a person with a mechanical heart pump, NYU Langone said, the second known transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney into a living recipient and the first transplanted along with the animal’s thymus gland. Pisano was brave and altruistic, Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, said in a statement Tuesday. Due to Pisano’s heart failure and end-stage kidney disease that required routine dialysis, she couldn’t have a standard transplant, NYU Langone said in a news release. The pig kidney she received was genetically altered to evade human antibodies, which typically detect and attack foreign organs.

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Persons: CNN — Lisa Pisano, Pisano, NYU Langone, Robert Montgomery, ”, Montgomery, … Lisa, Dr, Sanjay Gupta, ” Montgomery, Pisano’s Organizations: CNN, NYU Langone Health, NYU, NYU Langone Transplant, Procurement, Transplantation Network, US Food and Drug Administration, CNN Health