Scientists were able to temporarily attach a pig kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades long-quest to one day use animal organs to safe human lives.
Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage problem but among the hurdles: a sugar in pig cells, that is foreign to human bodies, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited pig, that was engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid a rejection.
The pig kidney was than attached to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a diseased recipient so that it could be observed for two days. The kidney worked as it was meant to and did not trigger rejection.
Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team, said in a statement that the procedure was a “transformative moment in organ transplantation.” He said in an interview that the procedure “was even better than I expected.” “The kidney turned a beautiful pink color and immediately urine started pouring out of the ureter,” he said. “…There was complete silence for a few minutes while we were sort of taking in what we were looking at, which was incredible. It was a kidney that was immediately functioning.”
This research is “a significant step,” said Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not part of the work. It will reassure patients, researchers and regulators “that we’re moving in the right direction.”
Raising pigs to be organ donors feels wrong to some people, but it may grow more acceptable if concerns about animal welfare can be addressed, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, who will help develop ethics and policy recommendations for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
“The other issue is going to be: Should we be doing this just because we can?” Maschke said.
Sources: NPR, CBS News
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