Monday, July 05, 2021

Chinese Scientists Produce Genetically Modified Pigs for Human Transplant

Good news! Successful porcine xenotranplantation is coming another step or more closer! Lucky pig charm!

This research is not the latest. First published December 2019 as a preprint, then published September 2020 in Nature Biomedical Engineering. U.S. based companies and scientists were also involved.

"eGenesis [Cambridge, Massachusetts] is a gene editing and genome engineering company committed to the development of safe and effective human transplantable organs, tissues and cells to address the global organ crisis." (Source)

"... Xinhua reported that the team of Yang Luhan, founder of Qihan Biotech in Hanzhou, China, and cofounder and chief scientist of Cambridge gene-editing company eGenesis in Boston, had created a prototype xenograft with clinical potential, successfully solving two major xenograft safety challenges: removing porcine endogenous retroviruses from pigs and enhancing xenograft immunocompatibility. ...
In 2017, eGenesis announced that it had produced the world’s first genetically modified pigs that do not carry endogenous retroviruses, eliminating the risk of virus transmission from pigs to humans; and in 2018, eGenesis produced the first immunoplex-engineered pig, reducing the immune rejection of pig allogeneic organ transplants. ..."

"Xenotransplantation, specifically the use of porcine organs for human transplantation, has long been sought after as an alternative for patients suffering from organ failure. However, clinical application of this approach has been impeded by two main hurdles: 1) risk of transmission of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) and 2) molecular incompatibilities between donor pigs and humans which culminate in rejection of the graft. ...
In this study, we improved the scale of porcine germline editing from targeting a single repetitive locus with CRISPR to engineering 13 different genes using multiple genome engineering methods. ..."

Chinese Scientists Produce Genetically Modified Pigs for Human Transplant (behind paywall)




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