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Pigs set to save humans with liver, kidney failures … but not for those who choose not to accept the medical breakthrough
KUALA LUMPUR, April 13, 2024: Chinese scientists have achieved another milestone in pig organ transplants fort humans.
The potential life-saving transplants for kidney and liver disease patients are set to save the sick. Unfortunately for some in Malaysia, they may not benefit from such science and medicine breakthroughs due to religious beliefs.
No News Is Bad News reproduces South China Morning Post’s news reports that were reposted by The Star:
From liver to kidney: Chinese scientists pass another milestone in pig organ transplants for humans
Saturday, 13 Apr 2024
1:01 PM MYT
Chinese doctors have transplanted a pig’s kidney with multiple gene edits into a brain-dead human recipient, just weeks after the same team performed the world’s first pig liver transplant on a human.
The latest operation was the first of its kind in China and follows previous transplants in the United States.
“As of April 7, the transplanted kidney has been working continuously for 13 days,” Qin Weijun, director of the Air Force Medical University Xijing Hospital, told Science and Technology Daily on Monday.
“It is functioning well in the recipient’s body and producing urine normally.”
The transplant was conducted on March 25, only a couple of weeks after the team performed the pig liver transplant. In both cases the patients’ families agreed to the procedure to help advance medical science, the university said.
Kidney transplants are the only cure for end-stage kidney disease. Although over a million patients in China suffer from the condition, only 10,000 transplants are performed every year, the Air Force Medical University’s department of urology said in a WeChat post last week.
However, xenogenic transplants – the transplant of an organ or tissues from one species into another – could offer a solution.
Pig organ transplants in China and the US open an ethical can of worms
Pigs are used for these operations because they have similar metabolisms and organ size to humans. While monkeys are the most similar species to humans, the US Food and Drug Administration has banned the use of their organs because of the higher risk of disease spreading.
Medical teams in both China and the US have tested pig organ transplants on brain-dead patients who need a ventilator to survive, with the consent of their families, before trying the technology on other patients.
“Research on xenogenic organ transplantation has entered an accelerated period,” said Dou Kefeng, one of the transplant team leads, according to the post.
Such transplants can provide “a highly imaginative solution” to transplant organ shortages, even just by buying time for patients waiting for human organs, Dou said.
During the transplant, the renal artery of the pig’s kidney was connected to the patient’s external iliac artery, which provides blood supply to the legs.
Once the blood flow resumed and the kidney began producing urine, the patient’s own kidneys were removed, the university said.
One of the major ethical concerns with xenotransplantation is the risk of acute rejection as well as the transfer of infectious diseases between the donor animal and humans.
To reduce that risk, the scientists used CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to add two human genes to the pig used in the transplant and remove three pig genes that can cause hyperacute rejection, the university said.
Last month, a team from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States made history with the first transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney into a non-brain-dead patient with end-stage kidney disease.
The 62-year-old recipient suffered an episode of acute rejection eight days after the transplant when white blood cells infiltrated the organ, according to US medical site STAT news.
However, this type of rejection is common in human kidney transplants and the report said the patient was successfully treated with steroids and a drug to deplete the white blood cells.
The doctors in China had been monitoring their kidney recipient for signs of rejection or infection, the university said.
The team’s feat with a pig liver last month, which also functioned normally for 10 days until it was removed, posed a bigger challenge than their recent success, because human livers are more complex than kidneys in both function and structure which means they cannot be completely replaced by a pig’s organ.
The Chinese team chose to keep the recipient’s own liver alongside the transplant to address this issue.
Chinese team grows humanised kidneys in pigs, raising hopes and ethical concerns
Before their attempts with humans, the transplant team also transplanted pig organs into monkeys in 2020, the university said.
Qin said that the transplant team’s work could pave the way for future transplants that could help the millions waiting for life-saving operations.
‘New way of thinking’: Chinese researchers unveil unique strategy for tissue regeneration, function
· Tiny implants containing neural stem cells can repair and regenerate tissue and bone with the help of nerves, scientists say
· Versatile platform restores more function than current therapeutic approaches, holds promise for patients with serious injuries like spinal cord injuries
Published: 5:11pm, 2 Apr 2024
Researchers in China have unveiled a new method of repairing injured tissue with the guidance of nerves, a strategy that could help patients with serious injuries, such as spinal cord injuries leading to paralysis, restore more function than current therapeutic approaches.
This new generation of neural construct implants – made of neural stem cells and inorganic biomaterials – was able to repair injured tissue and bone in rats with the guidance of nerves.
Tissue regeneration involves a complicated coordination of multiple body systems and signal pathways, including the central nervous system.
But most approaches to cell regeneration have typically relied on restoring cell activity while “neglecting the crucial roles of nerves in tissue repair”, according to a paper published in this month’s volume of the peer-reviewed journal National Science Review.
These attempts have led to “unsatisfactory therapeutic outcomes” for tissue engineering approaches, the researchers noted in their paper.
To address this gap, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a “new generation” of 3D-bioprinted neural constructs – a small implant containing neural stem cells – which they observed was able to regenerate skeletal muscle and bone in rats.
Paralysed rats implanted with the neural constructs were found to recover more hindlimb movement than the group of control rats, according to the paper.
A neural construct. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences
The new neural construct “could provide a versatile platform for promoting multiple tissue regeneration” including the recovery of tissue function, the paper said.
Neural stem cells – the cells in the nervous system capable of self-renewal and differentiation into different cell types – “have the ability to reconstruct neural components”, according to the paper.
“The leading role of the nervous system in the human body means that reconstructing the neural components of injured sites is essential for ideal tissue regeneration and functional recovery,” the researchers said in their paper.
However, neural stem cells have drawbacks – they are fragile, and their differentiation is not controlled, which has limited their practical use.
To work around the limitations for their neural constructs, the researchers incorporated lithium, calcium and silicon, into a hydrogel along with the neural stem cells to improve survival rates and promote their differentiation into neurons.
The neural constructs – or inorganic bioinks – were then implanted into rats to test their efficacy. The implanted hydrogel dissolved in body heat and left behind the network structures of the stem cells and biomaterials.
Paralysed man back on his feet again with brain and spinal implants
When implanted into paralysed rats with induced spinal injuries, the scientists found that the neural constructs helped to reduce the lesion cavity that formed in the spinal cord as a result of the injury, and promoted the growth of neurons in the area.
This boost in neuron growth allowed for more functional injury repair, allowing the rats to gain back more hindlimb motion after eight weeks.
The scientists also tested the neural constructs in rats with skull defects, and they discovered that, compared to a control group that had formed more fibrous tissues, the rats with the construct were able to form more new bone.
Cutting-edge Chinese stem cell treatment ‘could help spinal cord patients’
29 Aug 2021
The construct’s ability to repair muscle was also tested by implanting them into rats with cut leg muscles. After eight weeks, these rats formed more muscle fibres.
The study did have limitations, however, including potential long-term impact of the neutral constructs on the body’s inflammatory response, and the performance of the neural stem cells over a longer period of time.
“Overall, inorganic-biomaterial/neural stem cell-based neural constructs provide a new way of thinking and a new approach to promoting tissue regeneration from the point of view of neural modulation, which will shed light on biomaterial design for regenerative medicine,” the researchers said in the paper. - SCMP
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