https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/31/we-urgently-need-new-approaches-to-obtain-organs-for-transplantation-one-is-available-immediately/
Modern medicine has produced many high-tech miracles, among them gene therapy, electrical stimulation devices that restore significant function after traumatic spinal cord injury, and robot-performed surgery.
Another sector of medicine that needs a breakthrough is transplantation of solid organs. More than 100,000 Americans are waiting for transplants, and due to a shortage of hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys, at least 17 die each day. Currently, donor organs – from a living person or a cadaver – must match the recipient’s tissue type and size, and often, the match is not perfect. By one estimate, approximately half of transplanted organs are rejected by recipients’ bodies within 10-12 years. Compounding the shortage, the organ procurement system in the U.S. is inefficient, inconsistent, and unaccountable – in short, a mess that causes preventable deaths.
A high-tech approach that uses organs from genetically engineered pigs for transplantation, xenotransplantation, might both eliminate the need for human organ donors and reduce the risk of tissue rejection.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported in JAMA Surgery earlier this month that they had transplanted a pig kidney with 10 gene edits into a brain-dead man, where it functioned normally – producing urine and evading rejection – during a seven-day study.