GE Animal Organs Could be Used for Human Transplants

Researchers are saying that stem cells are not the only potential solution to the transplantable human organ shortage. Genetically engineered (GE) animal organs could be successfully transplanted into human beings, suggest researchers who just successfully transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a baboon.

Researchers presented the details of their success at the American Association for Thoracic Surgery's annual meeting, which was held this year in Toronto, Canada.

According to researchers from the Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Programme at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, pig hearts were genetically altered after several human genomes were added to the pig genome when the hearts were first forming. Researchers simultaneously removed several pig-specific genes that past research has indicated would trigger a dangerous immune response in humans.

Rejection is common enough even in human to human organ transplants, where the patient's immune system identifies some part of the donated organ as foreign, triggering a dangerous immune response that is almost always fatal.

Predictably, lab-made organs or, in this case, GE animal organs pose an even greater risk of rejection, and researchers must be very careful about eliminating every conceivable factor that could trigger such an undesirable response from the body following transplant.

Still, researchers say that they are not far from perfecting the process. In what they are calling a grand success, scientists were able to not only successfully transplant a GE pig heart into a baboon, but a follow-up study has shown that the baboon is still in perfect health a year later, showing no heart complications or potential for organ rejection. Most rejection, the researchers explain, happens within the first year following the transplant procedure.

Of course, researchers behind the study explain that "there is still a long way to go" before they can apply this procedure to human beings. Still, this most recent success brings them significantly closer to that final potentially life-saving goal.

The results of this latest animal transplant were presented at the 94th American Association for Thoracic Surgery annual meeting in Toronto.

As these findings have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it is suggested that they be viewed as preliminary findings until the time of official publication.