The tests to temporarily connect patients awaiting transplanting and in the end of life to an external pork liver that filters their blood.
An external organ to gain time of life to patients with serious liver diseases and awaiting transplantation. A organ-pensyes, but not human, but pork.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency that deals with the protection of the health of citizens and regulation in the medical and food field, has given the green light to tests to use genetically modified pork livers to treat people with severe liver failure. An important step forward in the xenotrapriants field, the use of organs of other animals in humans, which could also be used as “through” pending transplants with compatible human organs.
At what point are we. So far their studies on the xenotraprists of pigs have mainly concentrated on hearts and kidneys Animals transferred to patients without the requirements for traditional transplants. The life -saving potential of this field of medicine are mixed with doubts, not yet dissolved by research, on the long -term functionality of the transplanted bodies, on the risk of rejection and retrovirus infections contracted by the transplanted bodies, on the costs of the genetic modification necessary to adapt animals “donors” to humans and the ethical opportunity to use animals such as organs of organs in series.
This kind of transplants has so far concerned less than a dozen terminal patients between the USA and China, most of whom survived just a few weeks.
Lethal disease. The approval of the FDA concerns a trial on patients with acute hepatic insufficiency on chronic pathology (ACLF, Acute on Chronic Liveri Failure), a condition in which acute damage to the liver is grafted on a pre -existing chronic liver disease, leading to rapid compromise of the functionality of the liver. This pathology is rare and serious, with a short -term mortality of about 50%.
A first step. At the end of 2023, a clinically dead man in the US became the first patient to remain connected through his blood vessels to a genetically modified pork liver. For a few days, the patient’s blood was filtered by the pork liver mounted on a car in an extracorporeal “set-up, before the organ was disconnected to be analyzed.
A damaged liver cannot carry out its task of eliminating toxins from the body, processing nutrients and participating in the synthesis of proteins. An external organ can help patients with acute hepatic insufficiency (caused by diseases, alcohol abuse, intoxications) to earn time.
Provisional loan. According to what reported by Naturethe first phase of the new trial will concern 4 speakers from 10 to 70 years of age affected by ACLF or liver encephalopathy, a deterioration of brain functions due to liver failure.
For 72 hours within 2 weeksthe volunteers will be connected to a genetically modified pork liver to be more compatible with man, so that the organ can remove the waste products accumulated in their body. The patients will then be monitored for a year so as to verify the safety and repercussions of the procedure. The trial will be conducted by two Biotech companies, the Egenesis and the organx, already involved in the 2023 procedure.
The vision. After the review of these first security data, it will be decided whether to extend the clinical trial to another twenty people. Ideally, if there were no serious complications, the treatment could serve as a bridge for patients in very critical conditions for liver failure, while waiting for a human organ transplant or to recover the health conditions necessary to deal with a transplant intervention.
