Chicago Jan. 11 (BUS): His doctors reported Monday that an American man with a heart condition had a genetically modified pig heart transplanted in a first-of-its-kind surgery, and three days later the patient was healthy. .
Reuters reports that the surgery, performed by a team at the University of Maryland Medicine, is among the first to demonstrate the feasibility of transplanting a pig-to-human heart, an area made possible by new gene-editing tools.
If it proves successful, scientists hope the pig’s organs will help alleviate the shortage in donor organs.
“This has been a fantastic surgery and brings us one step closer to solving our organ deficiency crisis.
Dr. Bartley Griffiths, who surgically transplanted the pig’s heart into the patient, said in a statement that there simply weren’t enough human donor hearts to meet the long list of potential recipients.
“We are progressing with caution, but we are also optimistic that this world’s first surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future,” Griffiths added.
For 57-year-old David Bennett of Maryland, a heart transplant was his last option.
“Either die or have this transplant,” Bennett said the day before the surgery, according to a statement from the university. “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last option.”
To move forward with the experimental surgery, the university received emergency clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on New Year’s Eve through its Compassionate Use Program.
“The Food and Drug Administration used our data and our data on the experimental pig to allow transplantation for an end-stage heart patient who had no other treatment options,” said Dr. Mohamed Mohieldin, who heads the university’s transplant-animal transplant program. Humans.
About 110,000 Americans are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and more than 6,000 patients die annually before an organ transplant.
Bennett’s genetically modified pig heart was provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Virginia. On the morning of the surgery, the transplant team removed the pig’s heart and placed it in a special device to keep it functional until surgery.
Pigs have long been a baffling source for potential transplants because their organs are so similar to humans. For example, the heart of a pig at the time of slaughter is the size of an adult human heart.
Other organs from pigs being sought for transplantation into humans include kidneys, livers, and lungs.
Previous efforts to transplant pigs to humans failed due to genetic variations that caused organ rejection or viruses that pose a risk of infection.
Scientists have tackled this problem by modifying potentially harmful genes.
In the Bennett transplanted heart, three genes previously associated with organ rejection were ‘eliminated’, and six human genes associated with immune acceptance were inserted into the pig genome.
The researchers also deleted a pig gene to prevent excessive growth of pig heart tissue.
The work was funded in part by a $15.7 million research grant to evaluate Revivicor transgenic pig hearts in baboon studies.
In addition to the genetic changes to the pig’s heart, Bennett received an experimental anti-rejection drug from Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals based in Lexington, Massachusetts.
MI