Pigs to provide transplant organs

RESEARCHERS in Nanjing say genetically modified pigs to be born later this year will provide much-needed organs for human transplant. The Nanjing Medical University team said yesterday that clinical trials on pig organs were expected within two to three years. "We expect to test pig corneas and skin first, probably within two years. "Major organs like the heart, kidney and liver could take up to five years," Dai Yifan, a lead researcher, said. Dai said the pig organs will be genetically altered to be compatible with the human body and strict hygiene supervision will ensure they are free of bacteria or viruses. He said researchers first took cells from ordinary pigs, modified the gene that causes rejection in the human body, and then put the cells back into the animals. Dai has been studying organ rejection for about 10 years and several of his papers on the subject have been published. He returned to China from the United States last year and, at the beginning of this year, thousands of frozen cells taken from genetically modified pigs also arrived in Nanjing. Dai said his team had started to make such pigs by cloning. "The piglets will have to be separated from their mothers immediately after birth and be raised by our staff in a bacteria-free environment. "They will also have to pass a series of quarantine inspections to be qualified for organ transplants." Allan Zhao, another member of the team, said they expect to lower the cost of organ transplants with future pig substitutes. Lou Jinning, director of the Institute of Clinical Medicine at the Beijing-based China-Japan Friendship Hospital, said the work by Dai's team is "an obvious breakthrough" in China. "We are now catching up with a few other countries that have made major breakthroughs in this field. "Some have already bred such pigs for transplant research in non-human primates," he said. Lou believed transplanting animal organs into humans is the future and pigs are the best possible animal to use for that purpose. Long waiting lists and a lack! of dono rs have long been a problem, particularly in China. There are around 1.5 million patients in China on the waiting list each year for a transplant, but the number of donors is about 10,000. Lou said a major reason for the gap was the traditional Chinese belief that humans should die intact. Researchers say a major challenge now is to make pig organs compatible with human bodies in the long term. "They can now ensure there is no acute rejection from human body after transplants, so the key is to work on long-term compatibility," Lou said.