Baby Receives Heart Transplant With a Life-Changing Twist to Counter Organ Rejection

A baby in North Carolina has received a first-of-its-kind heart transplant that may prevent his body from rejecting the organ without the need for lifelong drugs to suppress the immune system.    The child, Easton Sinnamon, is the first person to receive a heart transplant along with implantation of thymus tissue from the same donor, according to a statement from Duke … Read more

Patient Who Received World’s First Pig Heart Transplant Has Passed Away

The first person to receive a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig has died two months after the medical milestone, the hospital that carried out the surgery said Wednesday.   The procedure raised hopes that advances in cross-species organ donation could one day solve the chronic shortage of human organs available for donation, and … Read more

Kidney transplants: Electric field keeps cells powered up while organs are on ice

Organs soon run out of energy while they are between donor and recipient, but an electric field could keep them running and improve survival Health 9 March 2022 By Clare Wilson Microscope images showing tissue damage in human donor kidneys without electrical treatment (top left and right) and less damage with treatment (bottom left and … Read more

Scientists Convert Donor Lungs to Universal Blood Type in a Medical First

Patients can wait a long time for potentially life-saving lung transplants, since the need to find close matches complicates the process. One of the characteristics that need to be matched is patient and donor blood type.   Now new research shows that the blood type of some donated lungs could be altered before transplant, which … Read more

Pig organ transplants: Team in China hopes to start first trial of pig skin grafts this year

After completing a human trial of modified pig skin grafts last year, a team in China hopes to start the first pig organ transplant trial later this year Health 9 February 2022 By Michael Le Page Trials using pig skin for human grafts could make the procedure more common wulingyun/Getty Images Several groups are vying … Read more

Kidney transplants: Gene-edited pig organs are not rejected by brain-dead person

In an experiment paving the way for clinical trials, two pig kidneys produced urine for 77 hours after transplantation into the body of a brain-dead man Health 20 January 2022 By Michael Le Page Surgeons preparing the pig kidneys for transplantation Jeff Myers, UAB Two pig kidneys genetically engineered to prevent rejection by the immune … Read more

Clinical-Grade Pig Kidney Transplanted Into Human Patient in Scientific First

For only the second time ever – and the first involving a clinical-grade organ – a genetically modified pig kidney has successfully been transplanted into a brain-dead human body, in a milestone example of xenotransplantation.   Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are trapped in an agonizing wait for a lifesaving organ donation. But there are … Read more

News at a glance: Warmest oceans yet, a pig-to-human heart transplant, and the world’s largest breeding colony of fish | Science

ECOLOGY Huge icefish colony found Scientists aboard an Antarctic research cruise have discovered the most extensive breeding colony of fish anywhere. In February 2021, while towing video cameras and other instruments close to the sea floor in the Weddell Sea, the RV Polarstern came upon thousands of 75-centimeter-wide nests, each occupied by a single adult … Read more

Here’s how scientists pulled off the first pig-to-human heart transplant | Science

Surgeons announced this week they had performed the first transplant of a pig heart to a human. The 7 January surgery was a milestone for research on transplants between species, known as xenotransplantation. It’s still unclear how well or how long the heart will function, but researchers hope the technique can someday make up for … Read more

Surgeons Transplant Pig’s Heart into Dying Human Patient in a First

Doctors have transplanted the heart from a genetically modified pig into the chest of a man from Maryland in a last-ditch effort to save his life. The first-of-its-kind surgery is being hailed as a major step forward in the decades-long effort to successfully transplant animal organs into humans.  Although it’s been tried before—one of the … Read more