2024-07-22 04:08:02
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — Some people who develop a rare and terrifying allergy to red meat following being bitten by a tick can still eat pork from an unusual source: genetically modified pigs bred for organ transplant research .
But don’t look for it in the supermarket. The company that raises these special pigs shares its scarce supply for free with some allergy sufferers.
“We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of orders,” said Revivor Inc. President David Ayares, opening a refrigerator filled with ground pork, ham, ribs and pork chops.
This allergy is called alpha-galactose syndrome, named following the sugar present in the tissues of nearly all mammals (except humans and primates). It can also cause a strong reaction a few hours following eating beef, pork or any other red meat, or certain mammalian products such as milk or gelatin.
But where does organ transplantation fit in? Since there aren’t enough donated human organs to meet demand, researchers are trying to use pig organs instead – and that same alpha-gelatin is a huge hurdle. It causes the body’s immune system to immediately destroy organs transplanted from ordinary pigs. So the first gene Revivicor disabled when it began genetically modifying pigs for xenografts was the gene that produces α-gelose.
While xenotransplantation is still in the experimental stage, Revivicor pigs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020 for use as a food source and potential source of human treatments. The FDA determined that there were no detectable levels of the alpha gene in several generations of these pigs.
Revivicor is a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, not a food company—it researches xenotransplantation—and has not found any agricultural companies interested in selling its pork.
Regardless, “this is FDA-approved pork for research, so we have to get it to patients,” Aarez said when shipments began a few years ago.
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science & Education Media Group. The Associated Press is solely responsible for all content.
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