First Human Transplant of a Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Performed (npr.org) 46
For the first time, surgeons have transplanted a kidney from a genetically modified pig into a living person, doctors in Boston said Thursday. From a report: Richard Slayman, 62, of Weymouth, Mass., who is suffering from end-stage kidney disease, received the organ Saturday in a four-hour procedure, Massachusetts General Hospital announced. He is recovering well and is expected to be discharged soon, the hospital said. "I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive," Slayman said in a statement released by the hospital.
The procedure is the latest development in a fast-moving race to create genetically modified pigs to provide kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs to help alleviate the shortage of organs for people who need transplants. "Our hope is that this transplant approach will offer a lifeline to millions of patients worldwide who are suffering from kidney failure," said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, the hospital's director for clinical transplant tolerance, in the hospital statement.
Several biotech companies are racing to develop a supply of cloned pigs whose DNA has been genetically modified so they won't be rejected by the human body, spread pig viruses to people or cause other complications. NPR recently got exclusive access to a research farm breeding these animals for a company in this competition, Revivicor Inc. of Blacksburg, Va. The kidney transplanted in Boston came from a pig created by eGenesis of Cambridge, Mass. The eGenesis pigs are bred with 69 genetic modifications to prepare organs for human transplantation. The changes protect against a virus known to infect pigs as well as delete pig genes and add human genes to make the organs compatible with people.
The procedure is the latest development in a fast-moving race to create genetically modified pigs to provide kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs to help alleviate the shortage of organs for people who need transplants. "Our hope is that this transplant approach will offer a lifeline to millions of patients worldwide who are suffering from kidney failure," said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, the hospital's director for clinical transplant tolerance, in the hospital statement.
Several biotech companies are racing to develop a supply of cloned pigs whose DNA has been genetically modified so they won't be rejected by the human body, spread pig viruses to people or cause other complications. NPR recently got exclusive access to a research farm breeding these animals for a company in this competition, Revivicor Inc. of Blacksburg, Va. The kidney transplanted in Boston came from a pig created by eGenesis of Cambridge, Mass. The eGenesis pigs are bred with 69 genetic modifications to prepare organs for human transplantation. The changes protect against a virus known to infect pigs as well as delete pig genes and add human genes to make the organs compatible with people.
Talking pigs (Score:3)
Re: Talking pigs (Score:2)
Re: Talking pigs (Score:2)
So would eating the bacon count as cannibalism?
Either way, the vegans are going to be pissed now that their vision of a meat free future has just been shattered.
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The other issue (yes, to your question, but not in a direct line since it's not your original body part) will be those whose religions don't allow eating of pork. If they can't eat it they certainly can't have it implanted in them.
This is in addition to vegans and members of PETA.
Hans Kristian Graebener = Stonetoss
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Evolution can take its course. Religious people are also free to decline research results based on stem cells from aborted babies.
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Does that include PETA? Their religion says medicine has never benefited from animal research, even though basically all of it has.
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The other issue (yes, to your question, but not in a direct line since it's not your original body part) will be those whose religions don't allow eating of pork. If they can't eat it they certainly can't have it implanted in them.
I've seen religious rules-lawyering. It is my opinion that there are people out there that demand a specific amount of "impact" with their religion. If there isn't enough impact, they'll interpret rules more severely and invent new ones. Example: Jewish people who won't hit an elevator button on the Sabbath because it "might" create a spark, which is fire, which is banned on the Sabbath. Another would be the Muslims who refuse to use alcohol-based hand sanitizers*.
On the opposite end, you have Jewish m
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If this patient were to visit California, would he have to wear a warning label?
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Go to Haiti and see how wonderful life is in a tropical paradise where there aren't enough police.
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Re: Talking pigs (Score:1)
Hmmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't we clone ourselves (humans) and just keep them on ice to grow....and harvest parts off them as needed?
We could. But in a world where Alabama is already declaring a frozen embryo a person such that dropping a petri dish is murder, well... there could be "complications".
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Talabama
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Couldn't we clone ourselves (humans) and just keep them on ice to grow....and harvest parts off them as needed?
There was a movie with Scarlett Johansen where they did this called "The Island".
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We also have plenty of scifi examples from written fiction, many dating from Asimov's time, from when cloning first became an idea.
And yes, just cloning the organ, or doing one from an animal like a pig was fairly rare - usually it was maximum horror with the organs coming from healthy people.
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Who has the ability to clone humans and then raise them to adulthood in some sort of unconscious state of suspended animation?
I am just talking technology and logistics, never mind the massive ethical questions we would have to tackle around that.
I will gladly take my pig organs all day long, this is cool as shit.
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We probably could have for the fraction of a major war, or a fraction of what was heaved onto the debt four years ago.
I'd suffer happily net 20% inflation if I had a clone sitting in a tank with organs, waiting...
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
A man living in a futuristic sterile colony begins to question his circumscribed existence when his friend is chosen to go to the Island, the last uncontaminated place on earth.
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Clone in tank with pristine organs!
I read your comment as
Well, there's a use case!
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Nope. The problem lies in "cloning" and "keeping on ice" and some rather bad ethical considerations.
The Island (Score:2)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_the%2520isla
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We already have that option - sort of. ... And many new parents opt to do so.
Umbilical cord blood can be saved and frozen.
The original impetus behind that was to have stem cells that might be used in the future in certain scenarios.
The original concept as I recall was in case a patient gets a leukemia or similar blood cancer that would necessitate marrow ablation. Instead of getting a donor bone marrow transplant (which is a common procedure but prone to many long term difficulties), instead you could get
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Go read Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go", which is based on a very similar concept (and a very good book).
So how do you feel, Mr. Pickens? (Score:2)
Mr. Pickens: Oink oink oink!
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This is great (Score:3)
I know scientists have been working on this for a long while and I really think this is one of those groundbreaking medical tech that will be transformative with how we do medicine, right along with things like genetically custom tailored cancer vaccines.
The number one killer today by far is still heart disease and if this takes off we can probably be a bit more liberal around the idea of getting a "new" heart as it seems like this can get around a lot of the issues with purely artificial mechanical ones.
Kidneys and livers are also things where I imagine when this is matured the SoP will shift from long term treatment and management to just "lets make them a new one"
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And would he then start sniffing piglets?
Asking the real questions.
religious fanatics need not apply (Score:2, Insightful)
So sad about all the Muslims and Orthodox Jews refusing these because they come from a deity-forbidden animal.
Maybe we can just pray for them to be healed!
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So sad about all the Muslims and Orthodox Jews refusing these because they come from a deity-forbidden animal. Maybe we can just pray for them to be healed!
The Jewish prohibition on pork is for eating. There is no problem with using pig parts for transplants "Yet despite the prohibition of consuming pork as well as the general taboo around pigs, there was never a ritual prohibition from gaining benefit from pigs.-------------- There is certainly no prohibition of benefit for nonconsumption purposes, and all the more so when a pig product is used for medicinal purposes. The value of saving lives would even trump the prohibition of consuming pork itself! For
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I'm glad to hear that. I'm sure various shades of fanaticism will have their own various interpretations, of course, but I sincerely hope they are able to join us here in the 21st century. If not... well, we'll just have to let Darwin do his work.
As for Muslims, I was basing this post on a comment a Muslim coworker made to me a couple decades back, when this sort of this was still scifi. He basically told me he'd rather die than have a pig organ implanted in him. Ya know, cuz Allah or whatever. If any signi
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they are also allowed to eat pork during famine and times of war.
I learned that from a Jewish man who eats bacon during war re-enactments and his Jewish wife rolls her eyes and lets him ;)
We're half-way to creating (Score:2)
We know what's in store for this brave patient (Score:3)
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Re:We know what's in store for this brave patient (Score:5, Informative)
Your comments would be entirely correct if this was a heart, liver, or lung transplant, but the kidney is a different ball of wax. There is a reason the kidney was the first major organ transplanted. It is indeed a vital organ. But, absent kidney, illness and death are slow events, and with medical care, there are workarounds. Even before dialysis and transplantation, the renal failure patient could be managed - a non-trivial affair that requires extremes adjustments in diet and lifestyle, and a highly compliant patient - but possible.
Then in the 1950's, we got practical dialysis. The kidney is the one vital organ for which we have a dependable organ-substitute technology. Even absent a way to procure a new organ, the "artificial kidney" can keep you alive long term. But, dialysis is not a perfect thing, so if a kidney can be transplanted (first time also in the 1950's), so much the better. The nice thing about these two interdependent technologies is that dialysis keeps a patient alive and functional long term if no kidney is available, keeps them alive as long as required to find a donor kidney, and is the lifeboat if a transplanted kidney fails.
For the other vital organs, there is no practical substitute. Ecmo (artificial lung, and heart-lung pumps for surgey), mechanical hearts, and pig livers have had heroic technical, engineering, and clinical development but have never been practical or successful beyond the first one or two "heroic patients" and public relations parties. Heart-lung machines (also from the 1950s) are everyday technology for open heart surgery, and ecmo is a vital life saving tool as an adjunct to ventilators, so a proven vital technology in clinical practice, but still not a total lung substitute outside of a few days.
Most of the long term risks in kidney transplantation are from immune rejection and then from immune suppression therapies. The reason that this report is so important is twofold - 1, that we can get an organ from other than a human donor, so procurement issues are obviated, and 2, that although xenografts normally have hyper-acute rejection, the genetic mods that were made are meant to make it look human, and hopefully highly compatible with the recipient, thereby hopefully minimizing rejection risks and the need for immunosuppression.
(If this works, there is the future promise that a donor animal could be grown with a specific target patient's own HLA and related antigens, making the donor animal look just like the intended host, thereby eliminating the immune and rejection issues.)
At very worst, the transplant will fail like any other kidney transplant that fails, and the patient will go back on dialysis and await another human donor through the donor networks, sometimes waiting for years. Your comments are mostly correct - he is brave, we hope it succeeds, etc. But, " I really don't think he will survive longer than two months" is incorrect. Perhaps the kidney might not last that long, but the patient will go back on dialysis.
Be aware that "end-stage renal disease" esrd means the kidney is end-stage, kaput, but the patient is rarely end-stage, and in fact the wonder of dialysis is that many patients remain rather healthy.
This is a frontier of medicine, not knowing where this latest step is taking us, because there is no prior art. If there is no immune rejection and the kidney survives for more than a few months, then the fascinating question is whether the kidney or patient will have strange metabolic consequences or complications due to differences between species how the kidney regulates electrolyte and acid-base balance, blood pressure, red blood cell production, etc. Pigs are generally considered very similar and human-compatible when it comes to organ and tissue sharing, but this is still a step into a new realm of unknowns.
MOD PARENT COMMENT UP! (Score:2)
Excellent, helpful information.