![](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/b3f12a10-d21e-5f13-92d7-fa3bb0f66195&operation=CROP&offset=0x28&resize=2008x1130.jpg\")
<\/div>\nby Issam Ahmed<\/strong><\/p>\n US surgeons have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in a 57-year-old man, a medical first that could one day help solve the chronic shortage of organ donations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The “historic” procedure took place Friday, the University of Maryland Medical School said in a statement on Monday. While the patient’s prognosis is far from certain, it represents a major milestone for animal to human transplantation.<\/p>\n The patient, David Bennett, had been deemed ineligible for human transplant — a decision that is often taken when the recipient has very poor underlying health.<\/p>\n He is now recovering and being carefully monitored to determine how the new organ performs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” the Maryland resident said a day before the surgery.<\/p>\n Bennett, who has spent the last several months bedridden on a heart-lung bypass machine, added: “I look forward to getting out of bed after I recover.”<\/p>\n The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the surgery on New Year’s Eve, as a last ditch effort for a patient who was unsuitable for conventional transplant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis,” said Bartley Griffith, who surgically transplanted the pig heart.<\/p>\n “We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this first-in-the-world surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future.”<\/p>\n Muhammad Mohiuddin, who co-founded the university’s cardiac xenotransplantation program, added the surgery was the culmination of years or research, involving pig-to-baboon transplants, with survival times that exceeded nine months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “The successful procedure provided valuable information to help the medical community improve this potentially life-saving method in future patients,” he said.<\/p>\n – 10 unique gene edits –<\/strong><\/p>\n Bennett’s donor pig belonged to a herd that had undergone genetic editing procedures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Three genes that would have led to rejection of pig organs by humans were “knocked out,” as was a gene that would have led to excessive growth of pig heart tissue.<\/p>\n Six human genes responsible for human acceptance were inserted into the genome, for a total of 10 unique gene edits.<\/p>\n The editing was performed by Virginia-based biotech firm Revivicor, which also supplied the pig used in a breakthrough kidney transplant on a brain dead patient in New York in October.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But while that surgery was purely a proof-of-concept experiment, and the kidney was connected outside the patient’s body, the new surgery is intended to save a person’s life.<\/p>\n The donated organ was kept in an organ-preservation machine ahead of the surgery, and the team also used an experimental new drug made by Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals along with conventional anti-rejection drugs to suppress the immune system.<\/p>\n About 110,000 Americans are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and more than 6,000 patients die each year before getting one, according to official figures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To meet demand, doctors have long been interested in so-called xenotransplantation, or cross-species organ donation, with experiments tracing back to the 17th century.<\/p>\n Early research focused on harvesting organs from primates — for example, a baboon heart was transplanted into a newborn known as “Baby Fae” in 1984, but she survived only 20 days.<\/p>\n Today, pig heart valves are widely used in humans, and pig skin is grafted on human burn victims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pigs make the ideal donors because of their size, their rapid growth and large litters, and the fact they are already raised as a food source.<\/p>\n Agence France-Presse<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Issam Ahmed US surgeons have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in a 57-year-old man, a medical first that could one day help solve the chronic shortage of organ donations. The “historic” procedure took place Friday, the University of Maryland Medical School said in a statement on Monday. While the patient’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":745136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}MORE ON THIS<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n