CD40L Blocker Tegoprubart Playing Key Role in Xenotransplantation

Exciting advances in kidney xenotransplantation have made headlines of late. Most recently, it was announced that surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital had completed a transplant of a genetically edited porcine kidney in January 2025—the fourth such procedure worldwide and the second at Mass General. The transplant recipient is one of two individuals currently living with a pig kidney.

As with the first-ever kidney xenotransplant, conducted at Mass General in March 2024, the patient is receiving the investigational therapeutic tegoprubart to help prevent rejection of the new organ. The drug was also used in the second-ever pig-to-human heart transplant.

Tegoprubart blocks the CD40 ligand (CD40L) pathway, which regulates immune cell communication and activation. Three global studies are evaluating the drug for the prevention of organ rejection in patients receiving kidney transplants, and it is also the subject of a separate investigator-sponsored trial for the prevention of islet transplant rejection in patients with type 1 diabetes.

To learn more about the history and potential of tegoprubart, Nephrology Times spoke with David-Alexandre C. Gros, MD, the CEO of Eledon Pharmaceuticals, the drug’s developer.