The Challenges of Xenotransplantation

Xenotransplantation from genetically engineered pigs to humans is one of the potential approaches that is hoped to provide an arbitrarily large supply of replacement organs. Whether or not this becomes a sizable industry depends on how long it takes for competing researchers to complete the alternative route of generating patient-matched new organs from cell samples. While the production of small functional organoids from patient samples is a going concern, the construction of entire organs continues to be held back by the inability to reliably generate the intricate blood vessel networks that are needed to supply large tissue sections. Not that xenotransplantation is without challenges, as this article illustrates. The problems are largely discovered by running into them, as researchers continue the process of testing transplants between pigs and baboons. Even though humans can give their hearts to compatible persons with little more than a side of immunosuppressants, cross-species transplantation is not so straightforward. More than 60 percent of attempts to replace a baboon's heart with that of a pig ended in the recipients dying within two days. Two important developments pumped hope into the field over the past few years. First, researchers began using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to remove parts of the pig genome that might harm humans or provoke an immune response. Then in 2016 researchers took this further by showing baboons could survive with a genetica...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs