David-Alexandre Gros, MD, on Addressing Unmet Needs in End Stage Kidney Disease With Genetically Modified Porcine Kidney Transplant
The chief executive officer of Eledon Pharmaceuticals discussed the company’s collaboration with EGenesis.
“While 5 or 10 years ago, this would have sounded like science fiction, today it is happening. We've now put organs, both hearts and kidneys, from pigs into humans. The procedure that was done a few weeks back at Mass General Hospital was the second time that EGenesis [...] had put a kidney from their humanized pigs into a human and tegoprubart, our drug, was used as one of the core immunosuppressants to allow that to be possible.”
In February 2025, EGenesis announced that it had successfully completed its second in-human transplant of EGEN-2784, a porcine kidney that features a number of genetic modifications intended to prevent rejection in human patients, with the intention of treating end-stage kidney disease. The procedure, which was part of an FDA-authorized Expanded Access pathway, notably involved an immunosuppression regimen including Eledon Pharmaceuticals’ tegoprubart, an investigational monoclonal antibody directed at the costimulatory CD40L pathway, with the intention of improving efficacy and reducing the risk of adverse events. Following the news of the transplants success, CGTLive® got in touch with David-Alexandre C. Gros, MD, Eledon’s chief executive officer, to learn more.
Gros discussed unmet needs in end-stage kidney disease. He noted that the 2 current standard of care treatments are dialysis, which is costly and has poor patient outcomes, and organ transplantation, which provides better quality of life, but also faces significant limitations. Gros stated that most kidney transplants last only 10 to 15 years, meaning younger patients would require multiple transplants over their lifetime, exacerbating the already problematic shortage of available organs. Furthermore, he explained that tacrolimus, the primary immunosuppressant used in kidney transplant since the 1990s, can cause substantial adverse events, including hypertension and diabetes.
Gros highlighted 3 possible approaches to addressing the transplant crisis. The first would be substantially increasing organ donation, but he noted that this has been tried for years and is highly challenging. The other 2 options are extending organ lifespan through improved immunosuppression and sourcing organs from genetically modified pigs. Eledon is currently pursuing both of these options through the development of tegoprubart and its collaboration with EGenesis.
