Chinese scientists keep monkey alive for 6 months with gene-edited pig's kidney
WeirdNews
Chinese scientists keep monkey alive for 6 months with gene-edited pig’s kidney
(Web Desk) - In an extraordinary development, China has made a breakthrough in the transplantation of organs from one species into another, with the country’s first gene-edited pig kidney surviving for over half a year in a monkey.
It follows the first ever transplant earlier this year of a gene-edited pig liver into a human cancer patient.
Previously, the lack of successful long-term animal tests on gene-edited pig organs has limited the number of clinical trials that can be carried out on human patients.
Around the world, there are only twenty cases of monkeys surviving long term following the transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney.
Chen Gang, who led the team behind the latest experiment at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology’s affiliated Tongji Hospital, told the newspaper this success could drive forward clinical research in the field.
The team transplanted a single gene-edited pig kidney into a monkey. The animal survived for 184 days - which Chen said met the benchmark for long-term survival.
After functioning normally for five months, the kidney condition deteriorated.
Patients around the world awaiting transplants are dying due to organ shortages, including in China, where only 10,000 transplants are performed every year even though more than a million people suffer from end-stage kidney disease.
Pig organs, which are of a similar size to human organs and have similar metabolism mechanisms, may offer a solution to the problem.
However, the risk that the human body will reject the organ is a major concern, so gene-editing has been used to reduce the prospect of this happening.
In March, a team at the Massachusetts General Hospital transplanted the first gene-edited pig kidney into a living recipient who was suffering from end-stage kidney disease.
The patient died two months later, but a transplant surgeon told the Boston Globe that his cause of death was a cardiac event, and that there were no signs of organ rejection.
