Pig Heart Transplant
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Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig
A 57-year-old man with life-threatening heart disease has received a heart from a genetically modified pig, a groundbreaking procedure that offers hope to hundreds of thousands of patients with failing organs.
It is the first successful transplant of a pig’s heart into a human being. The eight-hour operation took place in Baltimore on Friday, and the patient, David Bennett Sr. of Maryland, was doing well on Monday, according to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
“It creates the pulse, it creates the pressure, it is his heart,” said Dr. Bartley Griffith, the director of the cardiac transplant program at the medical center, who performed the operation.
“It’s working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before.”
Last year, some 41,354 Americans received a transplanted organ, more than half of them receiving kidneys, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that coordinates the nation’s organ procurement efforts.But there is an acute shortage of organs, and about a dozen people on the lists die each day. Some 3,817 Americans received human donor hearts last year as replacements, more than ever before, but the potential demand is still higher.
Scientists have worked feverishly to develop pigs whose organs would not be rejected by the human body, research accelerated in the past decade by new gene editing and cloning technologies. The heart transplant comes just months after surgeons in New York successfully attached the kidney of a genetically engineered pig to a brain-dead person.
The heart transplanted into Mr. Bennett came from a genetically altered pig provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Va.
The pig had 10 genetic modifications. Four genes were knocked out, or inactivated, including one that encodes a molecule that causes an aggressive human rejection response.
A growth gene was also inactivated to prevent the pig’s heart from continuing to grow after it was implanted, said Dr. Mohiuddin,who, with Dr. Griffith, did much of the research leading up to the transplant.
In addition, six human genes were inserted into the genome of the donor pig — modifications designed to make the porcine organs more tolerable to the human immune system.
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@mik said in Heart Transplant:
Amazing.
Agreed. Let’s see how long it lasts without rejection though.
@jon-nyc said in Heart Transplant:
Agreed. Let’s see how long it lasts without rejection though.
Yup. That monkey heart didn't work out too well, did it.
Of course, we're almost half a century later.
Also, the article says that the patient is still on some kind of significant cardiovascular support, and says, "it's not uncommon." Yeah, let's see how that pig heart works without being helped by a LVAD (or whatever they're using).
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A handful of transplant programs either formally or informally rejected him for a heart transplant. He was deemed ineligible for an artificial heart pump due to uncontrollable arrhythmia.
What?
If you remove the heart, the arrhythmia is not an issue, right?
More details here:
https://news.yahoo.com/first-pig-human-heart-transplant-212616040.html
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Three Weeks Later
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2341118/pig-to-human-heart-transplant-the-holy-grail-of-surgery
ET: In medical terms, how is the patient doing now with a new heart?
Dr Mohiuddin: David Bennett, our patient, is improving. We have not witnessed any problem with the heart. It is contracting and functioning as we had expected. I explain it by telling people it is like installing a BMW’s engine in an old car. So, there is no issue with the heart. But, you know, this patient, who has been severely deconditioned because of his prolonged illness he was on bed for two months in our hospital. And out of those two months, he was on this machine called the ECMO machine, also known as extracorporeal life support, which functions as a heart. Though his kidneys and other organs were functioning fine, overall, this person was in a very bad shape. So, our major concern was, based on our previous experiments, we were sure that this heart will, you know, work well. But our main concern is whether or not his body will be able to support this heart.
ET: What challenges will the patient face in the future?
Dr Mohiuddin: One of the major challenges is a compliance. At 57, he came to us with a failing heart because he was not taking blood pressure medications. We were even asked by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): If the hospital cannot trust this patient with a human heart, how can he be trusted with a pig’s heart and whether he would even take prescribed medications,which would be required as long as the heart is functional.
We have great hopes that this person has received a new lease of life. We are trying to educate him, and we will follow him, even if we have to visit his house to make sure that he's taking his medicine because this is a very precious experiment and a lot of experiments coming later will depend on the success of this experiment. To me, being able to conduct this experiment is a success. Every passing day is a success, but for long-term use of this heart, this patient has to be compliant, and a strict check needs to be done. So, I think that is the biggest challenge before us.
ET: When do you think this patient will be able to live a normal life right now?
Dr Mohiuddin: He was on support. We have managed to remove the support he was on That was done gradually. When we were confident that his heart can support his life other breathing machines were also removed. He is talking at this point and receiving all the required medical attention. But even if it was a human-to-human transplant, the normal transplant, it takes a while for the patient to be able live on his / her own. It will take at least a month ICU care, and then maybe a month of rehab, because all his muscles have become very weak due to inactivity. So, at this point he cannot even walk by himself. But with a lot of physiotherapy, rehab and if all goes well, we are hoping he should be back home in the next two months.
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Yeah, even regular transplants that happen after a month of ECMO have long recovery times.
By contrast I was out of ICU in 2 days, out of hospital in 14. Did a 5k (walk mostly) at 3months.
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
Yeah, even regular transplants that happen after a month of ECMO have long recovery times.
By contrast I was out of ICU in 2 days, out of hospital in 14. Did a 5k (walk mostly) at 3months.
@jon-nyc said in Heart Transplant:
Yeah, even regular transplants that happen after a month of ECMO have long recovery times.
By contrast I was out of ICU in 2 days, out of hospital in 14. Did a 5k (walk mostly) at 3months.
That's wicked good.
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@jon-nyc said in Heart Transplant:
Yeah, even regular transplants that happen after a month of ECMO have long recovery times.
By contrast I was out of ICU in 2 days, out of hospital in 14. Did a 5k (walk mostly) at 3months.
That's wicked good.
@jolly said in Heart Transplant:
@jon-nyc said in Heart Transplant:
Yeah, even regular transplants that happen after a month of ECMO have long recovery times.
By contrast I was out of ICU in 2 days, out of hospital in 14. Did a 5k (walk mostly) at 3months.
That's wicked good.
Thanks. The 5k in particular, even though I walked much of it I still finished in 39m. Other guys get out of the hospital in 2 weeks or so. But I don’t know any who were as recovered at 3mo.
