An Unexpected Solution To Our Organ Donor Crisis
by Alicia Kennedy
There are currently more than 120,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, and every day, another 22 will die before they receive one. Procuring organ donations is a notoriously complicated and unpredictable business (for starters, something tragic usually needs to happen to a donor first), and can’t come close to meeting demand.
Researchers have been hard at work seeking a safer, more reliable way to increase the organ supply. For awhile, one method in particular seemed to be gaining traction: Figure out how to grow a human organ in an animal, then harvest it as needed. However, late last year, the government revoked all funding for this type of research in what the Mercury News called “a startling reversal of policy, reminiscent of the Bush administration's 2001 ban on embryonic stem cell funding.”
To many, the idea of human-animal hybrids (a.k.a. chimeras) provokes an unease straight out of our darkest sci-fi landscapes. But at UC-Davis, one reproductive biologist Pablo Ross persists in his exploration of the field despite a lack of funding. For now, Ross does something called “gene editing.” The process is more than a little reminiscent of Frankenstein: First, he takes a pig embryo and deactivates the gene necessary for developing a pig pancreas. Then, a few days later, he adds in human stem cells to grow a human pancreas instead.
https://www.good.is/articles/pigs-as-organ-factories
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