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Review
. 2022 Jun 9:13:900594.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.900594. eCollection 2022.

Xenotransplantation: A New Era

Amber N Carrier  1 , Anjali Verma  1 , Muhammad Mohiuddin  1 , Manuel Pascual  2 , Yannick D Muller  3 , Alban Longchamp  2 , Chandra Bhati  1 , Leo H Buhler  4 , Daniel G Maluf  1 , Raphael P H Meier  1
Affiliations
Review

Xenotransplantation: A New Era

Amber N Carrier et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

Organ allotransplantation has now reached an impassable ceiling inherent to the limited supply of human donor organs. In the United States, there are currently over 100,000 individuals on the national transplant waiting list awaiting a kidney, heart, and/or liver transplant. This is in contrast with only a fraction of them receiving a living or deceased donor allograft. Given the morbidity, mortality, costs, or absence of supportive treatments, xenotransplant has the potential to address the critical shortage in organ grafts. Last decade research efforts focused on creation of donor organs from pigs with various genes edited out using CRISPR technologies and utilizing non-human primates for trial. Three groups in the United States have recently moved forward with trials in human subjects and obtained initial successful results with pig-to-human heart and kidney xenotransplantation. This review serves as a brief discussion of the recent progress in xenotransplantation research, particularly as it concerns utilization of porcine heart, renal, and liver xenografts in clinical practice.

Keywords: clinical trial; heart; kidney; pig; rejection; xenograft; xenotransplantation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Longest survival of xenotransplanted organs or tissues in human. WT, wild type.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Potential candidates for heart, kidney, and liver xenotransplantation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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