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As someone who will need a heart transplant, holy fucking shit fuck yes, please let this be more than just a cool story and help me live too.
As an American, I already know the cost of this procedure is going to be in the millions. Insurance companies will moan and cry about experimental treatments not covered for at least a decade.
Only the rich and powerful will be paying out of pocket to extend their lives with genetically modified pig hearts.
Well, then fingers crossed I win the lottery
Utilization of a new perfusion method commercialized by the Swedish company XVIVO for storing and treating the donor heart after it’s harvested. The heart was bathed in a special blend of hormones, electrolytes, nutrients, and dissolved cocaine, all of which contribute to minimizing ischemic injury and shown in prior studies to significantly extend xenograft viability.
cocaine
Just thought I’d highlight that
Nice
Science is amazing
Is the pig okay?
Yeah, they gave him an orangutan’s heart.
Is the orangutan okay?
The chain o heart transplants
Little dry.
Needs garlic.
holy shit! i never thought id see it, but were damn close!
This could be another one of those revolutionary things, like AI, that’s been slowly creeping up on us but that is going to be a surprising change-everything moment once the threshold has passed. If a pig has been modified sufficiently that its heart can work indefinitely in a human, then probably so will its kidneys or lungs. Maybe even the liver, though that one does enough endocrine processing that I’d expect further work to be needed there.
I’ve been looking forward to the work on 3D printed organs coming to fruition on these lines, but being able to take the organs from a pig will be so much cheaper and easier.
I think that a lab grown organ will be better in the long run. You know that the organ will work with humans and you don’t have to sacrifice an animal to get the organ.
I hate that at this point I’m more worried that it will be another thing like healthcare in the US that will be used to further our dependence on our employers. “Oh you wanna have a weekend? Would you prefer a weekend or access to immortality”
Liver transplant in human to human is still pretty good, but kidneys and lungs are a must.
When in the pig life cycle are the genes edited? Is this in the embryo or later on? Surely not after birth?
The heart xenotransplant was finally performed by the UMMC cardiac transplantation team on January 7, 2022. That morning, the heart was removed from a 1-year-old, 240-pound genetically modified pig supplied by regenerative medicine company Revivicor.
That doesn’t answer the question….
Quite. My guess is in vitro fertilisation, followed by gene editing of the fertilised egg, before implantation. Then you can breed a population of GM pigs suitable for organ transplants.
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Potential therapeutic use and consumption…
Wait , so we can still eat the pig after it’s sacrificed for the heart?
I am not a geneticist, so maybe I am overreacting, but are they only messing with the heart genes?
I think I would like to skip the pork chops from these pigs.
