In the second major step in the organ transplant process this year, scientists have successfully transferred a genetically modified pig heart to humans.
The director of the New York University Langone Organ Transplant Institute, where the transplants were performed, Dr. “One of the incredible things is to see a pig’s heart beating inside a human chest,” Robert Montgomery said at a news conference Tuesday.
One transplant was performed in mid -June and the other was completed on July 6th.
But there’s a trick: Transplant patients are brain dead while their hearts are still beating on a ventilator for pig organs. It will likely take years for human transplant procedures to become common and reliable options for people on long waiting lists for the heart, kidneys and other vital organs.
“It’s going to be an iterative process of learning and changing tactics,” said Montgomery, who received a heart transplant.
But the doctor hopes that one day the pig’s organs will “become a renewable and sustainable source of organs, so no one will die on the waiting list.”
And more human trials may come true in the coming years.
The first such heart transplant was completed on a surviving patient at the University of Maryland in January. The transplant was performed on a 57 -year -old man with life -threatening heart disease.
And Bennett’s new pig’s heart failed two months later. Pig virus DNA was eventually discovered in the heart, but there was no evidence of active infection, the surgeon behind the procedure told the New York Times.
“We really don’t know what caused this heart failure and why he died,” Montgomery said. Sabi. That’s why he insists it’s important to continue research on deceased donors before moving on to more live transplant trials.
The emergency room doctor Dr. Chicago, not included in the study. Chris Colbert told Insider after hearing the news: “It’s a huge, massive step in the right direction. It’s not just an organ, it’s also a two heart pig that was transferred to NYU this summer, ”using 10 genetic modifications. Because they are designed, they can work on the human body for at least 72 hours. All four genetic modifications were for pigs to avoid transplant rejection. and abnormal growth and six are human genes, designed to make the human and pig parts more compatible. ”
“This is really the next frontier in transplant medicine,” Preethi Perlamarla, a heart transplant specialist in Mount Sinai in New York who was not involved in the NYU research, told the Insider.
And the routine transfer of the pig-to-human heart could be “very manageable” within a decade.
Prilamarla said before pig heart transplants become regular, doctors need to better understand how to make the modified pig organs more compatible with people’s living and moving so that recipients don’t reject them. He added that researchers and surgeons need to “make sure we don’t have unexpected infections that can happen to pigs and then infect humans.”
But he also said that he will not be surprised if pig-to-human heart transplants are becoming common in his career.
Source: Science Alert
Source: Arabic RT
