CBS 2: 71-Year-Old Thankful for HIV-Positive Organ Transplant
CBS 2 recently interviewed Irene Kim, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center, about a new program that allows people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to receive organ transplants from deceased donors with HIV—a shift that could help ease the nation’s donor shortage.
Cedars-Sinai is the first hospital in the Los Angeles area to offer HIV-to-HIV organ transplants. Surgeons recently transplanted a donated liver into Billy Miller, 71, and kidneys into two other recipients living with HIV. All three organs came from deceased donors with HIV.
Kim told CBS 2 reporter Kara Finnstrom that giving Miller access to an HIV-positive donor pool significantly shortened the time he had to wait for a transplant.
“Because that pool of recipients for that type of organ is very, very small, what it allowed us to do was transplant Billy much faster,” she said.
Kim told Finnstrom the program is currently limited to recipients living with HIV.
“Right now, there is not a cure for HIV, so we wouldn’t want to transplant an HIV- positive donor organ into someone who is HIV negative,” she said.
However, Kim explained, research shows that it is “quite safe to do this matching profile,” transplanting an organ from an HIV-positive donor into an HIV-positive patient.
For years, federal law prohibited organs from donors with HIV from being transplanted at all. Clinical trials later allowed researchers to study HIV-to-HIV transplants, and after years of research supporting the safety and effectiveness of the approach, federal rules were changed in 2024.
Kim told Finnstrom the goal is to expand the donor pool wherever possible.
“We try to make, in short, every donor work that we possibly can because there is an organ shortage crisis in the United States,” she said.
Ten weeks after receiving his liver transplant, Miller said he feels dramatically better. Kim said the two kidney recipients also are doing well.
Watch the complete segment from CBS 2.