2023-05-14 14:00:00
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On 14.05.2023 at 04:00
Modified on 14.05.2023 at 4:00 p.m.
Researchers are exploring other avenues: transplants of organs of animal origin or even artificial implants.
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Since the law of 2017, we are in theory all organ donors, except for the 30% of French people who have expressed their refusal. But there are still a lot of organs missing. On average, only 25% of waiting patients are transplanted every year. Researchers are therefore working on other avenues, such as xenografts, derived from animal species. In January 2022, an American team transplanted the heart of a genetically modified pig into a 57-year-old man. Upstream, several genes in porcine tissue, against which we have antibodies, have been neutralized, and human genes have been inserted to avoid the rejection. If the patient died two months later, this operation was nevertheless considered a feat. “For the moment, organs of animal origin have always been rejected by the recipient, but there is a real interest in continuing research”, underlines Professor Gilles Blancho, president of the French-speaking Society of Transplantation. On one condition: remain very vigilant about animal viruses that could infect patients.
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Another promising avenue: artificial organs
Carmat, the designer of an artificial heart
The Carmat artificial heart imitates a human heart with two ventricles connected to the patient’s arteries which circulate the blood, and sensors which allow the rhythm to be adapted to needs (physical effort, etc.). Marketed in July 2021 in Europe after thirteen years of research, it has been implanted in a total of seven German and Italian patients in heart failure terminal, who only survived a few weeks or months. At the end of 2021, the company announced that it was suspending poses for several months, due to component quality issues. Less sophisticated, the SynCardia heart, worn worldwide by 2,000 patients, is only temporary, pending a transplantation.
Artificial kidney raises hope
On the kidney side, a California team succeeded in implanting a prototype bioartificiel in September 2021. The size of a smartphone, it is equipped with a hemofilter, which removes waste from the blood, and a bioreactor that regulates metabolic functions. At the research stage, this prototype raises great hopes for patients who need regular dialysis or are waiting for a transplant. As for the artificial uterus, often announced, it is not yet developed. Certainly, in 2021, in Israel, mouse embryos developed for six days ex utero, in tubes transformed into an artificial uterus, but there is still a long way to go before managing to grow an embryo outside the body of a female.
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The organoids, for rebuild organs
The last path to follow carefully: experiments on organoids, which ultimately aim to rebuild organs. “The development of organoids, these clusters of cells derived from stem cells, makes it possible, for example, to reconstruct a piece of bone. From this artificial matrix, human cells come back to colonize it and produce bone again in a few years”, illustrates Professor Tsimaratos.
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