Pig-to-human kidney transplant
There will never be enough human kidneys available to transplant all the patients in renal failure who are on dialysis. While there has been considerable interest in xenotransplantation (sourced, in this case, from pigs), the barriers to sustainable transplant have so far proved insurmountable: these include immune rejection and activation of cryptic viruses. Now, thanks to genome editing, those barriers may now be overcome:
“The pigs whose organs were used . . . came from the same company that supplied the organ for Saturday’s operation, run by Cambridge-based eGenesis, co-founded by the famed Harvard geneticist and bioengineer, George Church. The company has used the CRISPR-cas9 gene-editing technology to make 69 adjustments to the pig genome, eliminating features that would cause the human body to reject it and inactivating pig viruses that could be a threat to humans.”
Welcome to the future, peeps!
xenograft kidney transplant
They’ve been using pig and cow tissue for heart valve transplants for over a decade now. The big downside is that the patient must stay on anti-rejection drugs indefinitely. The breakthrough here is being able to use pig tissue without anti-rejection drugs.
I got an aortic valve replacement in 2009, it was a pig valve. I’ve never had to take anti-rejection drugs at all. According to heart-valve-surgery.com, “the valves are treated to mitigate the need for anti-rejection medications.”
@Bob,
Yes, pig tissue used in heart valve transplants is chemically fixed and inert. There are no living porcine cells in heart valve transplants.
Joel:
Thanks for the info. Sounds like a good post to me.
@Kaleberg.
Pig/cow tissue used in heart valve transplants is chemically fixed and inert. There are no living porcine/bovine cells in heart valve transplants. The breakthrough here is being able to use a living, functioning porcine kidney. The patient also received new monoclonal antibody drugs specifically designed to suppress immune reactions against pig tissue.