A team from New York University Langone Health has successfully transplanted two genetically modified pig hearts into humans who died in June and July, a new step in addressing organ shortages around the world. country and develop a clinical protocol that would provide an alternative source of organs for people with heart disease.
The two xenotransplantations were performed on June 16 and July 6, 2022 at NYU Langone.
The hearts functioned normally, with no signs of rejection during the three-day experiments.
These transplants follow the line initiated at the University of Maryland where the first genetically modified pig heart xenotransplantation was performed on a 57-year-old man with terminal heart disease. However, the patient died in March, although the reasons for death remain unclear.
The team, led by Nader Moazamiused pig hearts engineered by Revivicor Inc and tested them for viruses and none showed evidence of a pig virus called porcine cytomegalovirus that was detected in the Maryland patient’s blood and may have contributed to his death.
The pigs had four genetic modifications to prevent abnormal organ growth and rejection and six to help prevent pig-human incompatibilities.
Procurement, transport, transplant surgery, and immunosuppression were aligned with current clinical standards used in heart transplantation.
For now, they believe that xenotransplantation is safer in brain-dead recipients than in living patients and also more informative because biopsies can be done more frequently.
It is the first step to understand the mechanistic, molecular and immunological aspects of xenoheart transplantation
Alex Reyentovich
NYU Langone
The 72-hour experiments produced preliminary data, leaving many questions to be answered before testing with human pig hearts began.
“This is the first step in developing a deep understanding of the mechanistic, molecular, and immunological aspects of xenoheart transplantation and the feasibility of using standard clinical practice and tools to do so,” says Alex Reyentovich of NYU Langone.
Scientists believe deceased-donor xenotransplantation studies are critical to gathering the data needed to advance a field that for decades until last year had been tested only on nonhuman primates.
One of the critical elements of success in advancing this field is improved control of the swine virus. «Other studies have shown that porcine cytomegalovirus may be a factor in the success of xenotransplanted organs.», explain the scientists.
In this new work, more sensitive detection methods have been introduced to detect low-level traces of porcine cytomegalovirus in donor pigs.