Last October, the world's first genetically engineered porcine kidney transplant was performed at NYU Langone Health (New York University Langone Medical Center). This was the first breakthrough success of xenotransplantation, bringing new hope to the unlimited supply of organs.
Just two months later, the Langone Medical Center is once again initiating a second experimental xenotransplantation.
According to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 90,000 people in the United States are waiting for a kidney transplant, but only 23,401 people in the United States received a kidney transplant last year, accounting for only about 25%. According to statistics, about 200,000 people in China are waiting for kidney transplantation every year, but only more than 9,000 cases have been successfully completed.
In the decade-long development, the development of organ donation in China has jumped to the second largest in the world. However, the development of donation is still far from filling the gap in demand, and genetic engineering non-human kidney transplantation technology has become the focus of scientists' research.
"Once again, we've made progress on single-gene knockout xenotransplantation!" Dr. Robert Montgomery, who was in charge of the knife, said.
According to the details of the experiment released by the Langone Medical Center, the steps of this allogeneic transplant operation are as follows:
The Montgomery team acquired GalSafeTM pigs from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics. GalSafeTM pigs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020 as a potential source for treating humans, developed by United Therapeutics.
Montgomery's team "knocked out" the alpha-gal gene in donor pigs, which causes humans to develop antibody-mediated acute rejection of pig kidneys.
Montgomery's team transplanted pig kidneys after knocking out the alpha-gal gene to brain-dead humans who relied on ventilators to maintain vital signs and observed urine production and creatinine levels over 54 hours. The observation results of this experiment are that the key indicators of the normal work of the kidneys after transplantation are comparable to the results of human kidney transplantation, and no signs of rejection are observed.
"This could be the way to save thousands of lives every year." Dr. Montgomery said.
If this research can finally be implemented, then the tragedy of kidney replacement "apple" will not be staged again, and transplanting organs will end the "one life for one life" donation model.
Safeguarding human life is the greatest value embodiment of scientific and technological progress. Behind the breakthrough xenotransplantation surgery is the result of more than 50 years of hard work by scientific medical workers, before which the scientists who "replaced the pig kidney with the human kidney" were regarded as crazy. Also regarded as crazy are scientists in the field of anti-aging.
David Sinclair, a tenured professor at Harvard Medical School, once said in his book, "There are no biological laws that say we have to get old." ”
Treating aging as a disease and then curing it is obviously crazier than allogeneic transplant surgery. After all, people who need to change their organs are so small compared to people who will grow old.
After 30 years of deep research on anti-aging, NAD+ precursors (WLNAD-like substances) discovered by New Claire that can intervene in the aging process earlier have been included in the research of major universities around the world. Even in China, Tsinghua, Peking University, Tongji, Guangti, etc. have also published experimental papers on the substance, and the attention is quite high.
According to the paper published by New Claire in the academic journal CELL, this common substance in the human body will decrease sharply after the age of 25, and when the level of the substance is not enough to support the work of cell repair and energy metabolism in the human body, some aging indicators will change.
Similar to the GalSafeTM pig developed by The Combination Therapy Company that can be used as a source of human kidneys, Liteviken Biologics has also developed exogenous supplementable "WLNAD-like substances" from non-human sources, which have been proven in some human experiments to restore indicators such as the ability to restore muscles in the elderly, and truly move from science fantasy to real life.
Following Japan's inclusion of the substance in food raw materials in 2020, many domestic platforms have also successively appeared the above WLnad finished products. Some people call it "the preservative of ordinary people", and some people praise the progress of science and technology, which is just a small microcosm of the development of life sciences.
Many people are afraid of the progress of science and technology, worried that technology will disrupt the existing rules of order, but whether it is xenotransplantation surgery or anti-aging technology, scientists have never rushed to make a quick profit. As a leader in the study of xenotransplantation, Montgomery has more than once stood against clinical human living xenotransplantation.
In 2019, Montgomery participated in the American Organ Transplant Conference, and he proposed to first use brain-dead human remains as experimental objects on the grounds that the clinical timing of human living organisms was not ripe, and gradually transitioned to human living clinical.
Chen Zhonghua, a professor at the Institute of Transplantation at Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, believes that xenotransplantation surgery has made historic progress, but it does not mean that humans will soon be able to perform xenotransplantation surgery. People still need to wait, objectively and cautiously waiting for the arrival of new scientific research results.