Over the years, scientists have turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes.
In a medical first, docs transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to avoid wasting his life and a Maryland hospital mentioned Monday that he is doing properly three days after the extremely experimental surgical procedure.
While it’s too quickly to know if the operation actually will work, it marks a step within the decades-long quest to someday use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Doctors on the University of Maryland Medical Center say the transplant confirmed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can operate within the human physique with out quick rejection.
The patient, David Bennett, a 57-year-old Maryland handyman, knew there was no assure the experiment would work however he was dying, ineligible for a human heart transplant and had no different possibility, his son informed The Associated Press.
“It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” Mr. Bennett mentioned a day earlier than the surgical procedure, based on a assertion supplied by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
On Monday, Mr. Bennett was respiratory on his personal whereas nonetheless linked to a heart-lung machine to assist his new heart. The subsequent few weeks will probably be essential as Mr. Bennett recovers from the surgical procedure and docs rigorously monitor how his heart is faring.
There’s a enormous scarcity of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to attempt to determine learn how to use animal organs as a substitute. Last yr, there have been simply over 3,800 heart transplants within the U.S., a report quantity, based on the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system.
“If this works, there will be an endless supply of these organs for patients who are suffering,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the Maryland university’s animal-to-human transplant program.
But prior attempts at such transplants — or xenotransplantation — have failed, largely because patients’ bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. Notably, in 1984, Baby Fae, a dying infant, lived 21 days with a baboon heart.
The difference this time: The Maryland surgeons used a heart from a pig that had undergone gene-editing to remove a sugar in its cells that’s responsible for that hyper-fast organ rejection. Several biotech companies are developing pig organs for human transplant; the one used for Friday’s operation came from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.
“I think you can characterize it as a watershed event,” Dr. David Klassen, UNOS’ chief medical officer, said of the Maryland transplant.
Still, Dr. Klassen cautioned that it’s only a first tentative step into exploring whether this time around, xenotransplantation might finally work.
The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees such experiments, allowed the surgery under what’s called a “compassionate use” emergency authorization, available when a patient with a life-threatening condition has no other options.
It will be crucial to share the data gathered from this transplant before extending it to more patients, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, who is helping develop ethics and policy recommendations for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
“Rushing into animal-to-human transplants without this information would not be advisable,” Ms. Maschke said.
Over the years, scientists have turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes.
Just last September, researchers in New York performed an experiment suggesting these kinds of pigs might offer promise for animal-to-human transplants. Doctors temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a deceased human body and watched it begin to work.
The Maryland transplant takes their experiment to the next level, said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led that work at NYU Langone Health.
“This is a truly remarkable breakthrough,” he mentioned in a assertion. “As a heart transplant recipient, myself with a genetic heart dysfunction, I’m thrilled by this information and the hope it provides to my household and different sufferers who will ultimately be saved by this breakthrough.”
The surgical procedure final Friday took seven hours on the Baltimore hospital. Dr. Bartley Griffith, who carried out the surgical procedure, mentioned the patient’s situation — heart failure and an irregular heartbeat — made him ineligible for a human heart transplant or a heart pump.
Dr. Griffith had transplanted pig hearts into about 50 baboons over 5 years, earlier than providing the choice to Bennett.
“We’re learning a lot every day with this gentleman,” Dr. Griffith mentioned. “And so far, we’re happy with our decision to move forward. And he is as well: Big smile on his face today.”
Pig heart valves even have been used efficiently for many years in people, and Mr. Bennett’s son mentioned his father had acquired one about a decade in the past.
As for the heart transplant, “He realizes the magnitude of what was done and he really realizes the importance of it,” David Bennett Jr. mentioned. “He could not live, or he could last a day, or he could last a couple of days. I mean, we’re in the unknown at this point.”
