Gene-edited pig liver functions 10 days in human, marking a medical breakthrough
The wait for a life-saving organ is agonizing. Every eight minutes, another name is added to the already overwhelming transplant list. Thousands die each year, waiting for a chance at survival.
Scientists are working to address the organ shortage by exploring options like artificial organs and xenotransplantation. Recent advances in gene editing have made animal-to-human transplants, once considered unrealistic, a more viable possibility.
Recently, they have achieved a medical milestone.
Scientists have announced that they successfully maintained the function of a genetically modified pig liver for a brief duration.
In a 50-year-old brain-dead recipient, the transplanted liver survived and performed basic functions for more than a week.
Reportedly, it is said that this surgery was the first successful pig liver transplant into a human. The surgery was done at the Xijing hospital in Xi’an.
“This is the first time we tried to unravel whether the pig liver could work well in the human body and … whether it could replace the original human liver in the future. It is our dream to make this achievement,” Prof Lin Wang, who led the trial, told the Guardian.
Pig liver with six gene edits
Researchers transplanted a pig liver derived from a Bama miniature pig — a breed commonly used in research. The liver was modified with six gene edits to avoid immune rejection.
These edits, including the removal of a sugar called alpha-gal, were designed to make the organ more compatible with the human body.
The recipient received immune-suppressing drugs, and the liver was monitored for 10 days before the study was ended.
The experimental procedure demonstrated promising results, with the transplanted pig liver exhibiting functionality and compatibility within the recipient’s body.
They observed no immediate signs of organ rejection throughout the entire ten-day monitoring period. Notably, the liver began producing bile and maintaining adequate blood flow within just two hours post-transplantation.
“The graft function, haemodynamics, and immune and inflammatory responses of the recipient were monitored over the subsequent 10 days. Two hours after portal vein reperfusion of the xenograft, goldish bile was produced, increasing to 66.5 ml by postoperative day 10,” the team wrote in the study paper.
Long-term survival main challenge
In 2024, University of Pennsylvania researchers kept a pig liver alive for three days using an external machine connected to a brain-dead recipient. Reportedly, the Chinese study is the first peer-reviewed research to document the actual transplantation of a gene-edited pig liver inside a human body.
Since 2022, there’s been increasing but short-term progress in xenotransplantation. For instance, pig hearts, kidneys, and thymus glands have been transplanted into a limited number of human patients for short durations.
But experts caution that it may take years before animal-derived organs can match the survivability of human organs.
Currently, the longest of which has survived for approximately four months. Towana Looney, a 53-year-old patient, received a pig kidney transplant in late November 2024.
Interestingly, in the liver case, the recipient’s liver was not removed throughout the procedure.
This offers hope that pig livers could help patients on transplant waiting lists or those needing liver support during regeneration.
Source: Interesting Engineering
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Gene-edited pig liver functions 10 days in human, marking a medical breakthrough