{"id":584,"date":"2019-03-26T14:38:38","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T14:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/?p=584"},"modified":"2019-03-26T14:40:48","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T14:40:48","slug":"pigs-the-future-heroes-of-organ-transplantation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/2019\/03\/26\/pigs-the-future-heroes-of-organ-transplantation\/","title":{"rendered":"Pigs: the future heroes of organ transplantation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>Way back in 2017, I wrote a post about how scientists might one day use pigs to grow human organs. These \u201chuman-pig chimeras<\/a>\u201d could provide replacement organs to people with diseases like diabetes.\n

I recently learned that researchers are also trying to make pig organs suitable for transplant into humans. Their work doesn\u2019t rely on putting human cells in pigs; they don\u2019t need to make chimeras. Instead, these researchers use genetic engineering techniques to make pig organs more acceptable to the human body. Their modifications prevent the immune system from attacking and rejecting the pig organs. Thus, they hope to make pigs the future heroes of organ transplantation.<\/p>\n

This research holds a lot of promise for patients in need of organs. Yet, it\u2019s reasonable to worry that we devalue pigs by using them to produce human organs. My take is, if we accept pigs are sources of food, we should accept them as sources of organs. Nonetheless, I believe that we should develop transplant and food systems that don\u2019t rely on living animals. Learning how to grow organs in pigs may help us move in this direction. Hopefully, we\u2019ll eventually know enough about organ development to simply grow organs (and meat for consumption) in the lab.<\/p>\n

\"Caricature — One day we may be able to transplant pig pancreases (pigcreases?) like this to patients in need.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Way back in 2017, I wrote a post about how scientists might one day use pigs to grow human organs. These \u201chuman-pig chimeras\u201d could provide replacement organs to people with diseases like diabetes. I recently learned that researchers are also trying to make pig organs suitable for transplant into humans. Their work doesn\u2019t rely on … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Pigs: the future heroes of organ transplantation?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,6],"tags":[4,10,23,28],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-science-communication","tag-biology","tag-biotech","tag-cell-biology","tag-gene-therapy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tylerjford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Pig-hero.jpg?fit=1500%2C1913&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pap2RX-9q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}