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What’s next: The demand for organs is huge, with nearly 107,000 people on the U.S. transplant waiting list, and 17 of them die every day, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration, a federal agency.
Early results look promising for Bennett, who is expected to come off a cardiopulmonary bypass machine today (January 11) with rejection or infection.
New realm: While xenotransplantation (the process of transplanting an animal organ or tissue into a human body) has a long and often unsuccessful history, new gene-editing techniques have made it more feasible. The gene-edited pigs in last week’s surgery were provided by Revivicor, one of several biotech companies working to develop pig organs for transplantation into humans.
Revivicor has also successfully transplanted pig kidneys into human patients October, which is an important milestone in proving its technical feasibility. Like Revivicor, Harvard scientist George Church Co-founded a company, eGensis, that is working on using CRISPR gene editing to make animal organs available for human transplants, although the timeline for his ambitious proposal has been put on hold.
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