And it may represent the first step on the road to
using pig organs as viable options for humans.
I think it's a personal choice whether
you use a pig organ or die.
Not exact matches
Soon after, physicians approached Church about
using CRISPR to alter the genomes of
pigs so their
organs would not be rejected by the human immune system.
In the 1990s, a handful of drug companies, including Novartis, had collectively spent north of $ 2 billion to
use genetic manipulation to make human - friendly
pig organs.
In 2015, she and colleagues in Church's lab
used CRISPR to eliminate from
pig cells 62 genes so potentially dangerous their very existence nixed previous efforts to turn
pigs into
organ donors.
Pig organs have not been
used for transplant partly because they carry viruses that could infect people.
In the four years since CRISPR has been around, researchers have
used it to fix genetic diseases in animals, combat viruses, sterilize mosquitoes and prepare
pig organs for human transplants.
They have also
used it to prepare
pig organs for human transplants and to beef up the muscles in beagles.
Belmonte
uses very early - stage
pig embryos, whose biological signals are capable of turning human stem cells into the «perfect human
organs» he's after.
The Salk team did not report
using CRISPR in the human -
pig chimeras to help the
pigs develop more humanlike
organs.
These human -
pig «chimeras» were not allowed to develop past the fetal stage, but the experiment suggests such creations could eventually be
used to grow fully human
organs for transplant, easing the fatal shortage of
organs: 120,000 people in the United States are waiting for lifesaving transplants, but every day two dozen die before they get them.
Scientists
using CRISPR to edit
pig organs so they'll be accepted by human bodies think a breakthrough is coming that will end the
organ - donation waiting list.
However welcome the recent announcement that a team of scientists based at Newcastle University, has grown a section of human liver
using stem cells from umbilical cords, rather than from the more controversial source of embryonic stem cells, and whatever the eventual promise or potential of harvesting
organs for transplantation from genetically modified
pigs, the benefits of either of these two pioneering techniques to currently dying / suffering patients, remain both elusive and distant.