That phantom-like figure floating in a large jar was itself an intact, robust, reddish-brown organ no more than hours before. Now it’s translucent, a bunch of white tubes like the branches of a tree showing what’s inside.
This is a pig’s liver undergoing a gradual transformation to look and act like a human liver, part of an effort scientists have been making for quite some time to alleviate the shortage of transplant surgeries in the country through bioengineering.
The first human test of its kind
The first step the workers in this lab on the outskirts of Minneapolis do is wash the pig cells that made the organ do its job, then gradually fade as the cells decompose and discard.
What remains is a rubbery exoskeleton—the hexagonal, honeycomb-like structure of a liver cell—and its blood vessels are now empty. Subsequent human liver cells, taken from donated organs that cannot be transplanted, are then pumped into that rubbery structure. And those living cells migrate into the nooks and crannies of the structure to restart the organ’s functions.
“What we’re basically doing is basically replanting the organ,” says Jeff Ross, CEO of Myromatrix. “Our bodies won’t see it as a pig’s organ anymore.”
Audacious claim
Sometime in 2023, Myromatrix plans to conduct the first human test of a bioengineered organ to begin its proof-of-concept trial.
If approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the initial trial will be conducted outside the body of a patient.
The researchers will place a pig’s liver – which has turned out to be more like a human liver – next to a hospital bed to filter the blood of someone who has had sudden liver failure.
If this new ‘liver help’ is successful, it will be a crucial step towards eventually trying to transplant a bioengineered organ – possibly a kidney.
“It all sounds like science fiction, but there has to be a beginning somewhere,” says Dr. Sander Fluermann, MD, chief of transplantation at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, one of several hospitals already planning to participate in the liver support study. This will be (is what will happen) in the near future than transplantation of external organs”, or the transplantation of animal organs directly into humans.
More than 150,000 people are on the US waiting list for an organ transplant.
Thousands will die before it is their turn
Thousands of others did not even register on the list, as the numbers seem too great to wait for this dream, which seems very far-fetched, to come true.
“The number of organs we have is not going to meet demand and that’s why we’re frustrated,” said Dr. Amit Tevar, a transplant surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
