This is good news, to be celebrated with caution. The first patient with a CRISPR-edited pig kidney has left the hospital. A little over two weeks have passed since the surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, but according to U.S. press reports, Richard Slayman is well enough to have been discharged. Fingers crossed, then, for this 62-year-old man who, thanks to a xeno-rene, no longer needs dialysis.
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David Bennett, the first patient transplanted with a genetically edited pig heart, died on March 8 last year, two months after the surgery, presumably from a latent pig virus (a problem that does not seem hard to solve with more stringent protocols and screening, as Linda Scobie explained to me a few months ago). Since then, experimental transplants have continued in brain-dead patients who had donated their bodies to research. After xenokidneys with a single genetic modification transplanted in late 2021, in the summer of 2022 it was the turn of ten edits xenohearts. The state of the art now is that the potential of the approach still appears high, as does the morale of specialists.
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As you probably know, the first patient with a pig heart died two months after the transplant surgery. You probably heard also that a porcine cytomegalovirus (PCMV) may have contributed to the death. However, if you are still wondering how bad is the news for the future of xentransplantation, Linda Scobie from Glasgow Caledonian University is the one to listen to. She leads a research group interested in viral zoonoses in the context of novel technologies such as xenotransplantation, and the contribution and/or reactivation of viruses in chronic disease conditions. Professor Scobie is a member of the World Health Organisation committee for the global consultation on regulatory requirements for xenotransplantation trials. I reached her by email for a feature just published in Le Scienze, the Italian edition of Scientific American. Below you can read her answers.
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As you probably know, on January 7 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore a 57 years old man named David Bennett became the first human to have his heart replaced with that of a CRISPRed pig. But what does make a xenoheart suitable for transplantation?
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CRISPeR FRENZY 