Cis a world first. American surgeons have successfully transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig into a patient, the University of Maryland School of Medicine said in a statement on Monday (January 10). The operation, carried out on Friday, showed for the first time that an animal heart could continue to function inside a human without immediate rejection.
David Bennett, 57, had been declared ineligible to receive a human transplant. It is now closely monitored by doctors to make sure the new organ is functioning properly. “It was either death or this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s pretty hit and miss, but it was my last option, ”the Maryland resident said a day before his operation, according to the medical school. “I can’t wait to be able to get out of bed once I’m well,” said David Bennett, who has spent the last few months bedridden and hooked up to a machine that kept him alive.
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A “major” surgical advance
The US Medicines Agency (FDA) gave the green light for the operation on New Years Eve. “This is a major surgical breakthrough and one that brings us one step closer to a solution to the drug shortage. ‘organs,’ commented Bartley Griffith, who performed the transplant. The pig the heart comes from has been genetically modified to no longer produce a type of sugar that is normally present in all pig cells and that causes immediate rejection of the organ. This genetic modification was carried out by the company Revivicor. The latter also provided a pig kidney that surgeons had successfully connected to the blood vessels of a brain-dead patient in New York in October.
Nearly 110,000 Americans are currently on the waiting list for organ transplants and more than 6,000 people who need transplants die each year in the country. Xenografts (from animal to human) are not new. Doctors have attempted cross-species transplants since at least the 17th century, with the earliest experiments focusing on primates. In 1984, a baboon’s heart was transplanted into a baby, but the little one, nicknamed Baby Fae, only survived 20 days.