Medical Staff: "Communication Possible to Some Extent"
A patient who received the heart of a genetically modified pig for the second time in history has successfully completed the surgery and is recovering.
According to the New York Times (NYT) on the 22nd (local time), a research team at the University of Maryland School of Medicine transplanted a pig heart into 58-year-old Navy veteran Lawrence Posit, who was suffering from end-stage heart disease, on the 20th. This surgery was first performed in January last year.
Posit, who had given up other treatment methods due to complications, said before the surgery, "At least now there is hope and opportunity. I will do everything I can as long as I can breathe," and received the pig heart transplant.
Posit is currently recovering and is able to communicate with his wife, children, and family, the research team reported. Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery, said, "The initial response is very good," adding, "It is amazing to be talking to someone who has received a pig heart."
This is the second time that a genetically modified pig heart, engineered to avoid triggering the human immune system's rejection response, has been transplanted into a living patient.
The research team used a pig heart with 10 genetically modified genes for this surgery. The first transplant surgery, performed in January last year, was also conducted by the University of Maryland School of Medicine team. The 57-year-old man who received the pig heart then survived for two months before ultimately passing away.
The patient died from cancer he had been suffering from previously, but the heart functioned normally for 61 days. Although signs of rejection such as decreased urine output appeared, the condition returned to normal with immunosuppressant treatment.
Scientists continue to challenge animal organ transplantation using genetically modified pig organs that are more similar to human organs. On the 7th of this month, the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced research results showing that they created a "humanized kidney" by implanting an embryo fused with human and pig cells into a surrogate female pig.
In the United States, more than 4,100 heart transplant surgeries were performed last year, but the supply of organs available for transplantation is severely insufficient. Last year, about 100,000 patients were on the kidney transplant waiting list in the U.S., but around 5,000 died due to the shortage of organs.
Europe also sees an average annual death rate of 15-30% among those on organ transplant waiting lists. Recently, a research team at New York University (NYU) transplanted pig hearts into two brain-dead patients, and the pig hearts reportedly functioned normally in the bodies of the brain-dead patients for three days.
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