Chinese researchers report new steps in the pursuit To plant organs from animals to humans With successful kidney transplant and hinting on Wednesday that the pig’s liver may also be useful.
The Chinese patient is third A person in the world is known to live with a genetic modified pork kidney. The research team also told the same experience that cultivates the pork liver in a person in the brain.
Scholars Genetic change of pigs So their organs are more humane in the hope of alleviating the lack of transplants. Two initial carriers in the United States – Pork and Two kidneys pig It was short -term. But two additional pork beneficiaries so far Alabama woman Those who received a transplant in November and New Hampshire a man Who received one in January. The American clinical experience is about to start.
Nearly three weeks after kidney surgery, the Chinese patient is “very good”, and the pig’s kidneys work very well, said Dr. Lin Wang, from the Chicing Hospital at the Fourth Military Medical University in Xihan, for reporters this week.
Wang, a part of the hospital Xenotransplant, said the kidney recipient is still in the hospital for the test. Chinese media reported that she is a 69 -year -old woman who has been diagnosed with kidney failure eight years ago.
But Wang referred to a possible next step in transplanting the cell – learning to plant the pig’s liver. His team informed on Wednesday in the journal Nature that the pork cultivated in a person extending in the brain had survived for 10 days, with no early signs of rejection. He said that the pork liver produced the yellow and albums – important for the primary function of the organs – although it is not as much as the human liver does.
The liver represents a complex challenge due to its various functions, including waste removal, the breakdown of nutrients and medications, anti -infection, iron storage and regulating blood clotting.
Wang said: “We find that he can work a little in a person.” He speculated that he would be sufficient to help support the failed human liver.
In the United States last year, surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania tried to support the “bridge” By linking pork liver pigs To the human body, which the brain dies to filter blood, such as dialysis of kidney failure. The American pig developer studies this approach.
In China, the Wang team did not remove the liver of the deceased person, instead cultivated the pork liver near it.
Dr. Parsia Favafi, a liver transplant surgeon at the Uti South Western Medical Center, who did not participate in the work, said. “We hope the first step but is still, like any good search, more questions than answers.”
Wang said that his team later replaced the human liver to another person who is to the brain with a pork liver and analyzes the result.
According to the media reports, another Chinese hospital last year planted a pig’s liver into a living patient after removing a piece of his cancerous liver, but it is not clear how that experiment appeared.