On the way to the Chimeras

A breakthrough has been made in the methods of growing organs for transplantation

Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+

The researchers described the initial steps to grow fully suitable for transplantation of human organs from stem cells using the example of a technology successfully tested on pigs. They managed to implant the stem cells of a recipient pig into the embryo of another pig and grow a perfectly suitable new liver for it. This discovery gives hope for recovery to patients in the terminal stage who need an organ transplant.

In the USA alone, 20 people die a day due to the lack of organs or therapeutic possibilities for transplantation. Scientists have long come to the conclusion that organs grown from stem cells that need to be placed in place of damaged tissues could solve this problem. Such a decision allows you to refuse organ transplantation from other people or at least buy the patient time, writes the website of the University of Maryland.

Article by Park et al. Extraembryonic Endoderm (XEN) Cells Capable of Contributing to Embryonic Chimeras Established from Pig Embryos is published in the journal Stem Cell Reports – VM.

Bhanu Telugu and his colleagues from The University of Maryland, who founded the startup Renovate Biosciences Inc., presented a report on their achievement at the UMD Bioscience Day conference and received a patent for their invention.

The advantage of the new method over others that are currently being used to create donor organs in pigs is that the Telugu team actually works with organs of human origin, which are therefore more likely not to be rejected by the patient's body.

The article describes the initial stage of organ cultivation using the example of pigs, in whose embryos stem cells are injected to form the liver.

"This is an important step forward," Telugu said. – In a way, this is a dream, because a lot needs to be done before full organ transplantation becomes possible, but this article lays the foundation for all future research. You can't just start working with people in this kind of surgery, so we started by transplanting organs from pig to pig, working with stem cells and putting them in other pigs to track the process and make sure it's safe to create a liver."

In the future, the company is going to switch to growing other organs that are required by doctors – in particular, the pancreas and lungs.

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