Surgeons externally attached a pig liver to a brain-dead human body and watched it successfully filter blood, a step toward eventually trying the technique in patients with liver failure, reports U.S. News and World Report. About 10,000 people are currently on the U.S. waiting list for a liver transplant.
On Jan. 18, the University of Pennsylvania announced this different spin on animal-to-human organ transplants. In this experiment, the pig liver was used outside the donated body, not inside. Researchers say this is creates a “bridge” to support failing livers by doing the organ's blood-cleansing work externally, similar to dialysis for failing kidneys.
Xenotransplants (animal-to-human transplants) often fail because people's immune systems reject the foreign tissue. Scientists are trying again with pigs whose organs have been genetically modified to be more humanlike, reports U.S. News and World Report.
In this experiment conducted last month, researchers attached a liver from a pig — one genetically modified by eGenesis — to a device made by OrganOx that usually helps preserve donated human livers before transplant, the article said.
The family of the deceased, whose organs weren’t suitable for donation, offered the body for the research. Machines kept the body's blood circulating. The experiment filtered blood through the pig liver-device for 72 hours. The Penn team reported that the donor’s body remained stable and the pig liver showed no signs of damage, reports U.S. News and World Report.
Recently, kidneys from genetically modified pigs have been temporarily transplanted into brain-dead donors to see how well they function, and two men received heart transplants from pigs. The men both died within months.
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