A man hailing from Maryland, United States has become the first transplant recipient of a heart of a genetically modified pig. After a procedure that went on for around eight hours, the 57-year-old man fighting from a life threatening heart disease received the heart on Friday, and is recovering now, according to reports.

Though it is hard to say about the long term success of the transplant, the procedure has opened the gates for similar kind situation where a human can be cured by using organs from animals.

"It was either die or do this transplant," Mr Bennett explained a day before the surgery. "I know it's a shot in the dark, but it's my last choice," he added, according to a statement.

The pig used in the procedure had gone through genetic modification to take out several genes that would have led to the organ being rejected by Mr Bennett's body.

The surgery was performed by a team at the University of Maryland Medicine. They are among the first to demonstrate the viability of a pig-to-human heart transplant – a field made possible by new gene editing tools.

“This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis. There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients,” Dr Bartley Griffith, who surgically transplanted the pig heart into the patient, said in a statement.

Growing field of genome editing

Scientists have been working enthusiastically to modify pigs whose organs would not be rejected by the human body. As research accelerated in the past decade by new gene editing and cloning technologies, few month ago some surgeons in New York successfully attached the kidney of a genetically engineered pig to a brain-dead person.

Genome editing (genome engineering or gene editing) is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted, modified, or replaced in the genome of a living organism. Unlike early genetic engineering techniques that randomly inserts genetic material into a host genome, genome editing targets the insertions to site specific locations.

Researchers hope procedures like these will usher in a new era in medicine in the future when replacement organs are no longer in short supply.

The chief medical officer of the United Network for Organ Sharing and a transplant physician, Dr. David Klassen said, “This is a watershed event. Doors are starting to open that will lead, I believe, to major changes in how we treat organ failure.”

However, he was also of the view that there are many hurdles to overcome before such a procedure can be broadly applied, noting that rejection of organs occurs even when a well-matched human donor kidney is transplanted.