A 58-year-old man this week became the second patient in the world to receive a genetically modified pig heart transplant, the latest feat in a growing field of medical research.
Transplanting animal organs into humans, known as xenotransplantation, could be a solution to the chronic shortage of human organ donations. In the United States alone, over 100,000 people are waiting for a donor on the transplant list.
Both the first transplant involving a pig heart and the current one were performed by specialists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
In the first procedure, carried out last year, the patient ended up dying two months after the surgery due to “a multiplicity of factors, including his poor health” before the operation, the university said in a statement this Friday.
The second transplant took place last Wednesday (20), with patient Lawrence Faucette, prevented from receiving a human donation due to a pre-existing vascular disease and internal bleeding complications.
Without the experimental transplant, this father of two and Navy veteran would face heart failure.
“My last hope was the pig heart, the xenotransplantation,” Faucette said before undergoing the procedure. “At least now I have a hope and a chance,” she added.
After the procedure, Faucette was breathing without the help of machines and her new heart was functioning well, “without any external assistance,” the university said.
He was receiving conventional anti-rejection medications as well as a new antibody therapy to prevent his body from damaging or rejecting the new organ.
Xenotransplants are complicated because the patient’s immune system will attack the foreign organ. Scientists have tried to overcome this problem through the use of genetically modified pig organs.
In recent years, doctors have transplanted kidneys from genetically modified pigs into brain-dead patients.
The Transplant Institute at NYU Langone University Hospital in New York announced this month that a pig kidney transplanted into a brain-dead patient worked for a record 61 days.
The first research on xenotransplantation focused on primate organs. In 1984, a baboon heart was transplanted into a newborn known as “Baby Fae”, but she survived for just 20 days.
Currently, research has focused on organs from pigs, which are considered ideal donors for humans due to the size of their organs, their rapid growth and large litters, and the fact that they are already raised as a food source.
© Agence France-Presse
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