Heart Farm
Eckhard Wolf of Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich and his group plan to clone and then breed genetically modified pigs that will serve as heart donors for humans. The animals will be created based on a simplified version of an animal designed in the United States, which was used last month for the world's first human pig heart transplant.
The new species, modified from Auckland pigs, will be ready for testing by 2025.
It's strange, but Google gives out photos of each other more fearsome to the request "Oakland pig" , and an article on Reuters shows cute pink dwarf pigs. Although the warthog will not scare away patients from the waiting list – death is scarier.
In the first operation of its kind, a team from the Medical University of Maryland last month transplanted a pig's heart with ten genetic modifications to a terminally ill person. The attending physicians report that the patient has undergone the transplant well, although the risk of infection, organ rejection or arterial hypertension remains.
The new concept is to move to a simpler model with five genetic modifications. The group plans to use genetic modification and cloning technology to create a generation of "progenitors" whose descendants will have hearts that are not rejected by the human body. The first generation is due to be born this year, and their hearts will first be transplanted to baboons. Wolf plans to get approval for human clinical trials in two to three years.
Heart transplantation is indicated for people with heart failure who have exhausted all possible methods of treatment. The waiting list for a heart transplant in Germany by the end of 2021 numbered about 8,500 people, according to the Organ Transplant Foundation.
Wolf's work caused heated debates in Germany with the animal rights movement and even doctors: a petition of the society "Doctors against Animal Experiments" demanding to ban research in the field of xenotransplantation collected more than 57,000 signatures. Let's hope common sense wins.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru .