In a first, Chinese scientists grow humanised kidneys in pigs

For the first time, Chinese scientists have grown humanised kidneys, which have human cells,in pigs in a major breakthrough that could one day help in organ donation shortages.

The experiment entailed creating human-pig chimeric embryos containing a combination of human and pig cells and then transferring into surrogate pig mothers.

The study was published on Thursday (Sept 7) in the journal called ‘Cell Stem Cell’.

According to scientists, the kidneys were not entirely human as they included vasculature and nerves made mostly from pig cells, meaning they could not be used for transplantation in their current form.

It is unclear whether one could make a wholly human organ with current genetic engineering techniques.

Major breakthrough

The researchers from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health said their focus was solely on growing kidneys as they are the most commonly transplanted in human medicine.

"Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded," said the senior author Liangxue Lai, of the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine andHealth, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuyi University.

"Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs."

Another reason this scientific breakthrough is being hailed because previous attempts at developing human-pig hybrids have failed because pig cells tend to outcompete human cells during development, meaning the resultant chimera is almost entirely pig, according to Guardian.

Need more research

The Chinese scientists overcame this hurdle by genetically engineering a single-cell pig embryo so that it lacked two genes needed for kidney development.

This experiment created a niche within the embryo that could be filled by human embryonic stem cells that were integrated into the pig embryo.

"Although this approach is a clear milestone and the first successful attempt to grow whole organs containing human cells in pigs, the proportion of human cells in the generated kidneys is still not high enough," Darius Widera, a professor of stem cell biology at England's University of Reading, told AFP news agency.

(With inputs from agencies)

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