US surgeons are said to have successfully implanted a heart from pig genetically modified in human patients. The University of Maryland Medical School on Monday (10/1) said the operation was carried out on Friday some time ago.
The operation shows for the first time an animal heart can survive in humans without rejection in a short period of time.
As reported by AFP on Tuesday (11/1), David Bennett was judged ineligible for a human transplant. Thus, the 57-year-old resident is continuously monitored to determine the performance of his new organ.
“The choice is between dying or having this transplant. I want to live. This is my last choice,” he said one day before undergoing surgery.
The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency clearance for surgery on New Year’s Eve, as a last resort for patients unsuitable for conventional transplants.
“This is a groundbreaking surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis,” said Bartley Griffith, who performed the pig heart transplant.
“We proceed with caution, but also optimism that this world’s first surgery will provide important new options for patients in the future.”
Bennett’s donor pigs include a herd that undergoes a genetic editing procedure to disable certain sugar-producing genes, which would otherwise trigger a strong immune response and lead to organ rejection.
The edit was made by biotech company Revvicor, a supplier of pigs used in a breakthrough kidney transplant to brain-dead patients in New York in October 2021.
Donated organs are stored in a machine for preservation before surgery. The team also used the new drug along with conventional anti-rejection drugs to suppress the immune system and prevent organ rejection.
The drug is an experimental compound made by Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals.
About 110,000 Americans are currently awaiting organ transplants, and more than 6,000 patients die each year before getting them, according to official figures.
To meet the demand, doctors have long been interested in xenotransplantation or organ donation across species, with experiments dating back to the 17th century.
Early research focused on harvesting organs from primates, such as a baboon heart transplanted into a newborn known as “Baby Fae” in 1984, but it lasted only 20 days.
Currently, pig heart valves are widely used in humans, and pig skin is grafted on human burn victims.
Pigs make ideal donors because of their size, rapid growth and large number of offspring, and the fact that they have been raised as a food source.
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