Scientists have started to make huge inroads through cloning. The model that seems the most promising is not a primate such as a monkey, or chimp. Instead the animal that holds the most promise of all potential animal donors is of all things…the pig. Incredibly scientists have succeeded in removing those proteins from pig cells that are most responsible for rejection. In the simplest of explanations, these pig kidneys, on the cellular level are coming close to being indistinguishable from humans. They are so close in fact that they may not even need to be matched. You can essentially put the same kidney into…well anybody.
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Transplant surgeon Dr. Joseph Tector, and his laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is on the forefront of this scientific advancement. They are very close. So close in fact that I predict, for the coming year, that Dr. Tector will put the first pig kidney into a human being, possibly as early as the end of 2017, or the very beginning of 2018. I also predict this will work and change the way we think of organ transplantation forever.
Well, I had my own transplants (actually grafts) last year. A couple of pig skin grafts on a deep foot wound. Worked great especially since at one point my wound was so deep it looked like a gap removed by an ice cream scoop. Now healed so well you wouldn’t even know I had the wound unless I pointed out the small scar on my foot.
From an article in 2016:
At UAB, Tector will head the xenotransplantation program, which focuses on transplanting animal organs, tissues and cells into human recipients. The program just won a five-year, $19.5 million grant from United Therapeutics Corp. with the goal of developing genetically modified kidney transplants from pig models to humans by 2021.