EURONEWS – Scientists in China have transplanted a modified pig liver into a brain-dead human – the latest step toward using pig organs to help extremely ill patients with liver failure.
In one of the first trials of its kind, surgeons from Xijing Hospital at the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an attached a genetically modified pig liver to a brain-dead patient in March 2024, two months after a related experiment in the United States.
It’s the latest in a wave of research into xenotransplantation, or organ transfer from one species to another.
Several pig kidneys and hearts have been transplanted into living patients since 2022, with some people surviving for weeks afterward.
Pig liver showed no signs of rejection
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The Chinese transplant in a brain-dead patient was first reported last year. But the new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, sheds light on how exactly it worked – and how the next attempts to use pig organs for human patients could unfold.
“This is the first time we’ve tried to unravel whether the pig liver could function well in the human body,” Dr Lin Wang, one of the study’s senior authors and a surgeon at Xijing Hospital, told journalists.
Notably, the surgeons did not remove the brain-dead patient’s own liver. They inserted the modified pig liver into the patient, with limited disruption to the original liver …