Washington:
Surgeons in the United States who transplanted genetically modified pig kidneys into brain-dead patients announced Thursday that the experiment had ended after a record-breaking 61 days.
The latest experimental procedure is part of a growing field of research aimed at advancing xenotransplantation, primarily by testing the technique on cadavers donated for science.
More than 103,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant, including 88,000 who need a kidney.
“Through close observation and analysis over the past two months, we have learned a great deal, and there is great reason to be hopeful about the future,” said Robert Montgomery of New York University’s Langone Transplant Institute, who led the operation. the director said. July.
This is the fifth so-called xenotransplant performed by Montgomery, who also performed the world’s first genetically modified pig kidney transplant in September 2021.
Tissues taken during the study showed that a mild rejection process had begun, necessitating an increase in immunosuppressive drugs.
A team from NYU Langone was able to stop immediate rejection by “knocking out” the gene responsible for a biomolecule called alpha-gal, which is the main target of migrating human antibodies.
The donor pigs for this experiment came from a herd grown by Virginia-based biotechnology company Revivicor.
The herd has also been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a meat source for people with hypersensitivity to alpha-gal molecules, an allergy caused by tick bites.
These pigs are bred rather than cloned, making the process more easily scalable.
Early xenotransplant research focused on harvesting organs from primates. For example, in 1984 a baboon heart was transplanted into a newborn baby known as “Baby Faye,” but she survived for only 20 days.
Current efforts are focused on pigs. Pigs are considered ideal donors for humans due to their organ size, rapid growth, high litter size, and the fact that they are already bred as a food source.
In January 2022, surgeons at the University of Maryland School of Medicine performed the world’s first pig-to-human transplant on a living patient, this time involving a heart.
He died two months after the milestone, later attributed to the presence of porcine cytomegalovirus in his organs.
Last week, Chinese scientists published a paper showing they had successfully created hybrid pig-human kidneys in pig embryos, an alternative approach that could one day help solve the organ donation shortage. It is.
But experts say the development raises ethical questions, especially since some human cells were also found in the pig’s brain.
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