Genetically engineered pig heart successfully transplanted into a dead man and connected to a ventilator
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Genetically engineered pig heart successfully transplanted into a dead man and connected to a ventilator.
The New York University team announced today (July 12, local time) that researchers successfully transplanted genetically modified pig hearts into two recently deceased people and connected them to ventilators.
The procedures are the latest advance in the field of animal-to-human transplantation, or xenotransplantation, which has seen a string of successes so far this year — raising hopes of a new, stable supply of organs to ease shortages.
The only difference between these heart transplants and normal person-to-person heart transplants is the organ itself, the team noted in a statement.
Nader Moazami, director of heart transplants at the NYU Langone Institute for Transplantation, said: “Our goal is to integrate the practice of typical everyday heart transplants, using only a non-human organ, without the additional help of untested equipment or drugs. operate normally.”
The team performed the transplants on June 16 and July 9 and monitored each recipient for three days.
During this time, the participants’ hearts functioned normally and the receptors showed no signs of rejection, and they were hooked up to ventilators to keep their bodily processes functioning semi-regularly — even after death.
Although these two recipients cannot be organ donors, go to whole-body donations that can participate in this type of research.
The hearts are believed to come from biotech company Revivicor, which makes genetically modified pigs (which also funded the research).
The pigs had 10 genetic modifications — four to block the pig’s genes and prevent rejection, and six to add human genes.
In early January, at the University of Maryland Medical Center, a living human was successfully implanted with a pig heart, also produced by Revivicor. David Bennett Sr., who had severe heart disease, initially responded well to the transplant but died of heart failure in March.
The exact cause is unknown, but infection with a pig virus may have been the cause of his death. Pig hearts are supposed to be virus-free, but experts say they can be hard to spot.
The NYU team said it introduced additional virus screening protocols for its transplants.
It also dedicates an operating room for xenotransplantation — one that will not be used for any other surgical procedures.
Even though pig hearts have been transplanted into living people, it is important to test transplants in deceased patients, Robert Montgomery, director of the Langone Institute for Transplantation at New York University, said in a news release.
“The point is to really learn, study, measure and try to really unravel what’s going on with this new, incredible technology,” he said. “If the team could do biopsies every day,” he noted, the University of Maryland research team The transplant cannot be studied in such detail because the recipient is still alive.
NYU has also used brain-dead patients to test kidney allografts. This fall, NYU announced that it had successfully attached a pig kidney to the leg of a patient on a ventilator.
The patient’s body did not reject the organ, and through 54 hours of observation, the organ was functioning normally.
The research team is still working toward a full-scale clinical trial of xenotransplantation in living humans. They need clearance from the FDA to do so.
Montgomery said in a news release that the NYU team’s goal is to extend the time they monitor transplanted hearts to gather more information to inform the trial.
He believes clinical trials could begin sometime between now and 2025. In April, Revivicor hopes to begin clinical trials within the next year or two.
There is still a lot to learn about xenotransplantation, and a lot to figure out about the ethics of animal-to-human procedures. But if they succeed, they could offer a new option to the thousands of people waiting for organs.
“I believe that allogeneic transplantation offers the best opportunity for a renewable, sustainable source of organs so that no one dies waiting for an organ,” Montgomery said.
Genetically engineered pig heart successfully transplanted into a dead man and connected to a ventilator
(source:internet, reference only)
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