The Human Immune Response to Pig Organs

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The idea of using animal organs has been around for a long time, ries i'm sure. The current interest is engineer some organs in animals that won't be as likely to cause an immune reaction. In maryland and also m y u, you've been using jean edited pigs to make them more suitable for transplant. How exact they different yet? They're not usually different from a pig, except you're able to target a couple of the kejens in the heart or the kidney that you don't want to trigger a reaction,. If you will, turn them off, tamp down.

Earlier this month, in a medical first, surgeons from the University of Maryland transplanted a genetically altered pig heart into a living person. Doctors believed it was their only chance to save the life of David Bennett, a 57-year-old patient who was considered too ill for a human organ replacement. With hundreds of thousands of people worldwide in need of new organs, are animals set to be the future of transplantation? Ian Sample talks to bioethicist Prof Arthur Caplan about how the operation was made possible, and what could be next. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod