USA: Surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient in world's first

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Mandatory Credit: University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC)

Specialised surgeons at the University of Maryland School of Medicine were able to transplant a pig’s heart into a human patient for the first time in history, in Baltimore, on Monday. The breakthrough operation could be a game changer for patients on waiting lists.

Transplants often lead to complications due to the recipient’s body rejecting the organ, a concern which is already common with human donors. Pigs bred for this purpose were genetically modified to minimise the risk of rejection during xenographs.

“We have modified 10 genes in this pig heart. Four genes were knocked out, three of them responsible for producing anti-bodies that causes rejection. So those three genes were knocked out, and the one gene was knocked out to control the grow of the pig and its organs,” said Cardiac Xenotransplant Programme director Muhammad M. Mohiuddin.

Bartley Griffith, the director of the Cardiac Transplant Programme said, “we have never done this on a human, and I would like to think that we have given him a better option than what continuing his therapy would have been. But whether it is a day, week, month, or a year, I don’t know.”

According to Mohiuddin, thousands of patients either waiting for a donor, or who do not qualify for an organ transplant, could potentially receive genetically modified animal organs if the procedure were to become more widely available.

#Transplant #Baltimore #UMMC

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