The list for human organ transplants is lengthy in any country, and some researchers still have some safety concerns about using animal organs for human transplants in order to shorten that list and save lives. But a new breed of pig may be a way to save lives and not run the risk of spreading dangerous viruses to human cells. Pigs are considered to be a good source for organs, because they are readily available, easily bred and are about the same size as people.
Corporate researchers at the Massachusetts-based BioTransplant Inc. said on Monday that they had bred a miniature pig that does not seem to transmit potentially dangerous viruses to human cells, and said it might be a way to make animal-to-human transplants safe.
The miniature swine carry the endogenous retroviruses, but for some reason, do not transmit them to human cells the way normal pigs do, researchers said. In most other pigs, the viruses incorporated themselves into the genome and cannot be removed. They are transmittable.
Another problem is that animal cells have a molecule on their surface that causes the human immune system to recognize them as foreign and reject them. Transplanted animal organs often die quickly in the human body.
But with the new breed of pig, the next step, according to company officials, is to genetically engineer the miniature pigs so that human bodies will accept their tissue and organs.
“What we are hoping to do is build this inbred herd as a potentially safer source of cells, tissues and organs for xenotransplants (animal-to-human transplants),” Elliot Lebowitz, president and chief executive officer of BioTransplant, said in an interview with Reuters.
Lebowitz explained that the miniature pigs, created for BioTransplant by a local supplier of animals for medical research, were highly inbred and this may be the reason their viruses could not be transmitted to human cells at least in the laboratory.
“We are hoping that we can save a lot of lives in a safer way and also reduce the healthcare costs, which are horrendous for end-stage organ disease,” Lebowitz said.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are on waiting lists for new organs, but there are not enough available. An estimated 10 people die every day in the United States while waiting for a heart, liver, kidney or other organ.
