Recipient Of First Successful Pig's Heart Transplant Passed Away
Update: 2022-03-10 14:30 IST
This handout photo released on January 10, 2022, shows surgeons performing a transplant of a heart from a genetically modified pig to patient David Bennett.
The first person, David Bennett Sr., the resident of Maryland whose heart was replaced with genetically modified pig died on Tuesday afternoon at the University of Maryland Medical Center, two months after his transplant.
He died at the age of 57. He had severe heart problems and had accepted the experimental pig's heart after being repeatedly turned down for a human heart.
A hospital official said that itwas uncertain whether his body had turned down the alien organ. No apparent cause had been found at the time of his death.Since his doctors hadn't conducted a detailed assessment yet, hospital officials said they couldn't comment on the cause of death.
The findings will be published in a group medical publication.According to Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed the transplant.The hospital's team was devastated by Mr. Bennett's death. Dr. Griffith added that he proved to be a brave and honourable patient who fought to the very end. Millions of people all around the world knew Mr. Bennett for his bravery and unwavering resolve to live.
The heart transplant was one of several groundbreaking procedures in recent months that employed tissues from genetically modified pigs to replace organs in people. Because there is a severe lack of donated organs, the procedure, known as xenotransplantation, gives new hope to tens of thousands of patients with failing kidneys, hearts, and other organs.
Previously, Mr. Bennett's transplant was declared successful. Since Since the pig's heart was not instantly rejected and proceeded to function for well with around a month, it was nevertheless considered a big step forward towards transplant patients.
Scientists have been attempting to create pigs whose organs would not have been discarded by the human body, a research endeavour that has gained traction in recent years because to advances in gene editing and cloning technology.
In October, surgeons in New York claimed that they had successfully linked a kidney grown in a genetically engineered pig to a brain-dead human patient, with the organ functioning normally and producing urine for 54 hours.
In January, University of Alabama at Birmingham doctors announced that they had effectively transplanted kidneys from a genetically implanted pig into the abdomen of a 57-year-old brain-dead man for the first time. For three days, the kidneys worked and generated urine.
Surgeons at the University of Alabama in Birmingham said they wanted to start a small clinical study with live human patients by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Virginia, gave Mr. Bennett with a heart from a genetically - modified pig.The pig was genetically modified in ten ways. Four genes, including one that encodes a protein that produces an aggressive human rejection response, were knocked out or inactivated.