The ghostly form floating in a large jar had been the robust reddish-brown of a healthy organ just hours before. Now it’s semi-translucent, white tubes like branches on a tree showing through.
after receiving the world’s first heart transplant from a pig last January — an animal genetically modified so its organs didn’t trigger an immediate attack from the human immune system. The FDA is considering whether to allow additional xenotransplantation experiments using kidneys or hearts from gene-edited pigs.
The Miromatrix approach stems from research in the early 2000s, when regenerative medicine specialist Doris Taylor and Dr. Harald Ott, then at the University of Minnesota, pioneered a way to completely decellularize the heart of a dead rat. The team seeded the resulting scaffolding with immature heart cells from baby rats that eventually made the little organ beat, garnering international headlines.
The source of those human cells: donated livers and kidneys that won’t be transplanted. Nearly a quarter of kidneys donated in the U.S. last year were discarded because hospitals often refuse to transplant less than perfect organs, or because it took too long to find a matching recipient. That set the stage for testing a "liver-assist" treatment similar to dialysis, using bioengineered livers to filter the blood of people in acute liver failure, a life-threatening emergency. Doctors now have little to offer except supportive care unless the person is lucky enough to get a rapid transplant.
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