A bite from a lone star tick can cause some people to develop alpha-gal syndrome, an unusual allergy to red meat. However, people suffering from this allergy have been able to continue to eat pork from genetically modified pigs created for organ transplant research, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
However, David Ayares, who heads Revivicor Inc., says don’t look for it in grocery stores. Revivicor breeds these special pigs for possible organ transplantation in humans. The company shares its small supply, for free, with allergy patients.
Ayares says they get hundreds and hundreds of orders so they opened a freezer jammed with packages of ground pork patties, ham, ribs and pork chops, AP reports.
Alpha-gal syndrome, named for a sugar that’s present in the tissues of nearly all mammals – except for people and some primates – can cause a serious reaction hours after eating beef, pork or any other red meat, or certain mammalian products such as milk or gelatin.
That’s where organ transplantation or xenotransplantation, comes in. Because there aren’t enough donated human organs to go around, researchers are striving to use organs from pigs. That same alpha-gal sugar is a big barrier and can cause the human immune system to immediately destroy a transplanted organ from an ordinary pig.
AP reports that the first gene that Revivicor inactivated as it began genetically modifying pigs for animal-to-human transplants was the one that produces alpha-gal.
While xenotransplants still are experimental, AP reports that Revivicor’s “GalSafe” pigs won Food and Drug Administration approval in 2020 to be used as a source of food, and a potential source for human therapeutics. The FDA determined there was no detectable level of alpha-gal across multiple generations of the pigs.
Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, has not found anyone in the agriculture business interested in selling GalSafe pork.
The GalSafe herd is housed in Iowa and to keep its numbers in check, some meat is periodically processed in a USDA-certified plant. Revivicor then mails frozen shipments to alpha-gal syndrome patients who’ve filled out applications for the pork, AP reports.
“Thank-you letters relating the joy of eating bacon again line a bulletin board near the freezer in Revivicor’s corporate office,” AP writes.
The company says pigs are not able to be used for meat if transplantable organs are removed. The anesthesia used so the animals feel no pain during organ removal means they don’t meet USDA rules for drug-free food, a company spokesman explained.
