Background

• Historical Examples of Xenotransplantation

  1. Transplants with pig, goat, sheep and monkey organs were attempted from 1902 up until 1923

  2. Patients survived only hours or days after transplantation

  3. No further animal to human transplants were tried again until 1963, after immunosuppressing drugs were developed
• Xenotransplantation attempts

  • 1963 chimpanzee kidney transplants were attempted on 13 patients by Keith Reemtsma at Tulane University in Louisiana
  • One patient survived for 9 months
• Xenotransplantation attempts

  • An American infant girl known as "Baby Fae" with a severe heart problem received a baboon heart in 1984
  • Fae died 21 days later due to rejection of the organ
  • The graft was meant to be temporary, but a suitable replacement could not be found in time
• BBC News reported in 2015 that Prof George Church and colleagues used a gene-editing technique called Crispr to alter the DNA of pig cells to create a better match for humans.
• ‘Xenotransplantation’, is the transfer of cells / tissues / organs from one species to another, for example, the transplantation of human tumour cells into mice for research on tumours / cancers.
• ‘Zoonotic diseases’ is the general term for diseases that are transmitted to humans from other animals.