Genetically Engineered Pig Hearts Transplanted Into Dead People

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Researchers successfully transplanted genetically modified pig hearts into two recently deceased people connected to ventilators, the New York University team announced today. The surgeries are the latest step forward in the field of animal-to-human transplants, or xenotransplantation, which has seen a flurry of successes so far this year -- raising hopes for a new, steady supply of organs to ease shortages. The only thing different about these heart transplants from a normal human-to-human heart transplant was the organ itself, the research team said in a statement.

The team performed the transplants on June 16th and July 9th, and each recipient was monitored for three days. In that time, the hearts functioned normally, and there weren't signs of rejection from the recipients, who were connected to ventilators to keep their body processes functioning semi-regularly, even after death. The two recipients were not able to be organ donors but were able to participate in whole-body donation for this type of research. The two pig hearts came from biotechnology company Revivicor, which produces genetically modified pigs (and also funded the research). The pigs had 10 genetic modifications -- four to block pig genes and prevent rejection and six to add human genes. A living person was successfully given a pig heart in early January, notes the report. While the person responded well to the transplant initially, they died of heart failure in March.

'The specific cause is still unknown, but infection with a pig virus may have contributed to his death,' adds The Verge. 'The pig hearts are supposed to be free of viruses, but experts say they can be hard to detect.' A research paper in late June details everything that went wrong with the transplant.

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