US surgeons successfully implant pig heart in human
A genetically modified pig heart was implanted into a US man with terminal heart disease, in a first-of-its-kind surgery. The patient is doing well three days post-surgery, his doctors reported on Monday.
Pigs have long been a tantalizing source of potential transplants because their organs are so similar to humans.
The surgery, performed by a team at the University of Maryland Medicine, is among the first to demonstrate the feasibility of a pig-to-human heart transplant, a field made possible by new gene editing tools, Reuters reported.
If proven successful, scientists hope pig organs could help alleviate shortages of donor organs, surgeon Dr. Bartley Griffith said.
Prior efforts at pig-to-human transplants have failed because of genetic differences that caused organ rejection or viruses that posed an infection risk.
Bennett’s donor pig belonged to a herd that had undergone a genetic editing procedure to knock out a gene that produces a particular sugar, which would otherwise have triggered a strong immune response and led to organ rejection.
The editing was performed by biotech firm Revivicor, which also supplied the pig used in a breakthrough kidney transplant on brain dead patient in New York in October. Researchers also deleted a pig gene to prevent excessive growth of the pig heart tissue.
In addition to the genetic changes to the pig heart, Bennett received an experimental anti-rejection drug.
Other organs from pigs being researched for transplantation into humans include kidneys, liver, and lungs.
