{"id":134791,"date":"2022-01-27T16:22:40","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T00:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/after-first-pig-to-human-heart-transplant-scientists-aim-to-make-it-routine"},"modified":"2022-01-27T16:22:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T00:22:40","slug":"after-first-pig-to-human-heart-transplant-scientists-aim-to-make-it-routine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/after-first-pig-to-human-heart-transplant-scientists-aim-to-make-it-routine","title":{"rendered":"After First Pig-to-Human Heart Transplant, Scientists Aim to Make It Routine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/after-first-pig-to-human-heart-transplant-scientists-aim-to-make-it-routine3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it\u2019s a shot in the dark, but it\u2019s my last choice,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.medschool.umaryland.edu\/news\/2022\/University-of-Maryland-School-of-Medicine-Faculty-Scientists-and-Clinicians-Perform-Historic-First-Successful-Transplant-of-Porcine-Heart-into-Adult-Human-with-End-Stage-Heart-Disease.html\">said<\/a> Bennett.<\/p>\n<p>The heart was provided by Revivicor, a company based in Virginia that has been engineering pig organs for roughly two decades. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/researchers-keep-pig-hearts-alive-baboons-more-2-years\">several<\/a> experiments for pig-to-baboon transplants, the organs survived up to nine months, until the animals passed away due to a lung infection unrelated to the transplant.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, the heart had 10 hefty genetic edits. Three of them wiped out sugar molecules on the outside of cells that provoke an immune response. Six bolstered the chance of the human host accepting the heart\u2014amping up an anti-inflammatory response, preventing blood vessel damage, and dampening any antibodies against the organ. Finally, the last edit limited the pig heart\u2019s size. Although it generally matched the size of a human heart, the team wanted to prevent the pig organ from overgrowth inside Bennett\u2019s chest once it was transplanted\u2014something they previously noticed happened in baboons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIt was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it\u2019s a shot in the dark, but it\u2019s my last choice,\u201d said Bennett. The heart was provided by Revivicor, a company based in Virginia that has been engineering pig organs for roughly two decades. In several experiments for pig-to-baboon transplants, the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}