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The University of Maryland Medical Center announced that it succeeded in transplanting a pig heart into a patient who had terminal heart disease. Doctors have called the procedure a “milestone” and see it as a step toward countering the organ donor shortage.
David Bennett, a 57-year-old American, was battling terminal heart disease when he accepted a heart transplant from a pig. “It was either dying or doing this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last option, ”Bennett said the day before the procedure.
Three days later, the patient is recovering from a surgery that doctors have labeled a “milestone.”
The seven-hour procedure was performed by a team from the University of Maryland Medicine and led by Dr. Bartley Griffith, MD. The surgeon explained that the patient suffered from heart failure and had irregular heartbeats, two conditions that did not allow him to opt for a human heart.
The team transplanted a heart that had been genetically modified. According to the experts, in the heart implanted in the patient, three genes were eliminated, which had previously been linked to the rejection of organs in other similar procedures. At the same time, six human genes related to immune acceptance were inserted into the pig genome.
The university obtained emergency clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration on New Years Eve through its “compassionate use” program, which allows such experimental procedures when a patient with a medical condition life threatening and you have no other options.
“We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this world’s first surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future,” added Griffith.
Despite the enthusiasm, doctors have warned that this is only a “first step” to see if xenotransplantation, from one species to another, might be viable. In addition, they assure that the next few weeks will be critical to know if the patient will be able to recover from the surgery.
A possible “solution” to the organ shortage
The optimism with this type of surgery is explained, in large part, by the shortage of human organs donated for transplants. According to the organdonor.gov website, about 110,000 Americans are currently waiting for an organ transplant and more than 6,000 patients die each year before receiving one.
Despite this, as the United Network for Organ Sharing shows, a record 3,800 heart transplants were performed in the US last year. Doctors have therefore stressed the importance of the procedure.
“If this works, there will be an endless supply of these organs for suffering patients,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the Animal-to-Human Transplantation Program at the University of Maryland.
The problem is that multiple procedures of this type have failed due to the instantaneous or very rapid rejection by the bodies of the patients to the animal organs.
Thus, genetic modifications open the way for this type of surgery to be viable. Several biotech companies are developing pig organs for human transplantation like the surgery in Maryland, which came from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.
With Reuters and AP
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