A pig’s liver has been transplanted into a human recipient for the first time in a ‘milestone’ for organ transfers between animals and people.
Scientists in China used a liver taken from a seven-month old Bama miniature pig which had been genetically modified to reduce the risk of rejection.
Once removed, it was kept ‘alive’ using a medical solution and chilled to 0-4C.
During the nine-hour-long surgery the recipient – a 50-year-old clinically dead man whose family had authorised the procedure – had the donor liver stitched to his blood vessels in his abdomen alongside his own liver.
Over the next 10 days, the donor liver successfully produced bile and maintained a stable blood flow.
The team hope that rather than a long-term solution, their procedure could one day be used as a temporary treatment for patients with liver failure while they wait for a human donor.
In the UK, there are more than 11,000 deaths due to liver disease each year. Around 700 people are currently on the waiting list for a transplant, and the average wait is three to four months.
The announcement follows a slew of recent breakthroughs, including transplanting a pig’s heart into a man and a woman currently living with a pig’s kidney.
Professor Lin Wang, one of the study’s authors from the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an, said: ‘The liver collected from the modified pig functioned very well in the human body.
‘It’s a great achievement. This surgery was really successful.
‘We examined the blood flow in the different vessels and arteries. The flow is very smooth. It functioned very well.’
The experiment was terminated after 10 days because of requests made by the patient’s family members.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest modified livers can survive and function in human bodies, but further research on long-term outcomes is needed.
‘We have the opportunity in the future to solve the problem of a patient with severe liver failure,’ Professor Wang added.
‘It is our dream to make this achievement. The pig liver could survive together with the original liver of the human being and maybe it will give it additional support.’
He also expressed a desire to conduct further research on living, non-brain-dead human beings in the future, but stressed the complications and ‘many rules’ around this.
Hellbound and Down 