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Donated human organs are in such short supply that thousands of people die waiting for one every year. U.S. researchers have been shattering records in xenotransplantation, or between-species organ transplants.
The researchers say they have kept a pig heart alive in a baboon for 945 days and also reported the longest-ever kidney swap between these species, lasting 136 days. The experiments used organs from pigs "humanized" with the addition of as many as five human genes, a strategy designed to stop organ rejection.
The GM pigs are being produced in Blacksburg, Virginia, by Revivicor, a division of the biotechnology company United Therapeutics. That company's founder and co-CEO, Martine Rothblatt, is a noted futurist who four years ago began spending millions to supply researchers with pig organs and has quickly become the largest commercial backer of xenotransplantation research.
Rothblatt says her goal is to create "an unlimited supply of transplantable organs" and to carry out the first successful pig-to-human lung transplant within a few years. One of her daughters has a usually fatal lung condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension. In addition to GM pigs, her company is carrying out research on tissue-engineered lungs and cryopreservation of organs. "We're turning xenotransplantation from what looked like a kind of Apollo-level problem into just an engineering task," she says.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Friday August 14 2015, @08:38PM
I have no time frame, but I'm sure in the future you'll be able to regrow a hand that was eaten by a garbage disposal, but if your heart is gone, a pig's heart could keep you alive until your replacement finishes regrowing, or until we can regrow hearts, until a donor is found.
My cousin, who taught college in the state of Washington (I've forgotten which university) thought she had the flu, then thought she was having a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. The doctor was knowledgeable enough to know it wasn't a heart attack, that he had neither the equipment nor knowledge to do anything and had her airlifted to a hospital that did.
She'd had a severe viral infection of her heart, so they amputated her heart. She was bedridden for six months, with a machine pumping her blood, until a donor could be found -- and after the donor heart was installed she was in a wheelchair for another year. She seems to be fine now.
Had they had one of these bioengineered pig hearts, she may have been back at the university in a few weeks, healthily waiting for a human donor.
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