Pig-to-human transplants ‘one step closer’

According to Newsweek, there are about 30,000 patients who undergo transplant surgery each year. More than 1000 people die every year for lack of an organ in the UK. It is followed by livers, hearts and then lungs.

There were 33,600 organ transplants a year ago in the US, and 116,800 patients on waiting lists and there are around one billion pigs in the world.

Xenotransplantation means to use animal living cells, tissues or organs in people to bridge the shortfall in available human organs. One promising prospect is to use animal organs in humans, with pig organs being particularly compatible for such transplantation.

Whether or not pig retroviruses would truly pose a risk of causing disease in humans remains controversial. Inactivation of porcine endogenous retrovirus in pigs using CRISPR-Cas9.

However, few researchers at Harvard Medical School, have tried to find a solution.

But the researchers then used the game-changing gene-editing technology Crispr to delete the 25 Pervs.It then took cloning technology, the same used to create Dolly the sheep, to place the genetic material from those cells into a pig’s egg and create embryos.

So far, so good, Yang said, showing that pigs don’t need PERVs to live: “We’ve shown you can produce PERV-free pigs which could serve as a source for future xenotransplants”. This potential organ resource could help save the lives of millions of patients suffering from organ failure, Yang added.

There’s a word that everybody should learn because in a few years it may be in nearly every day use. This has been an advanced revolutionary technology in the leading, a science fiction which nearly became a reality. The scientists are now conducting long-term studies to see the impact of the gene editing.

A major obstacle until now has been the cancer viruses embedded in pigs’ DNA, which are capable of making the jump to human cells. However, their genes have a virus that could prove to be fatal to humans. For decades, this research seemed utterly unsafe and even risky in financial terms for small companies to embark on. For decades, scientists have thought animals could solve the problem.

Agus tells CBS News in human heart valve replacement, pig valves are used, but they are put in formaldehyde and fixed. “As a result, xenotransfusion was banned in France for a number of years”.

Yang said that such genome damage is not a problem for the team, as they can select undamaged cells to use for the creation of embryos.

“Here I am a geneticist, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me”, Green said.