The working, beating genetically modified pig’s heart saved the life of a 57-year-old man with a life-threatening heart condition.
, commonly referred to as alpha-gal. “That sugar is also on the surface of bacteria,” explains Montgomery. Humans are exposed to these bacteria from birth in the GI tract, which triggers the immune system to make antibodies against alpha-gal to prevent those bacteria from entering the blood. People have “a huge reserve of these antibodies just circulating in our blood all the time,” Montgomery says, and those antibodies will attack animal organs because they recognize alpha-gal as a target.
By the 1990s, the public perception towards primates as organ donors had soured. “They’re much more scarce on the planet,” says Montgomery. “I was at a xenotransplant meeting in the 1990s and Jane Goodall was the keynote speaker… At the end of that, it was really clear to all of us that primates were not going to be the organ donors we were going to use.
Plus, most people have a much different relationship with the animal as a longtime food staple, says Montgomery, though he expectsto continue to rise as the field progresses, such as whether or not animals should be genetically modified for transplants. But there were two big hurdles the research field had to jump over before pigs could be a viable option: the issues with alpha-gal and the potential cross transmission of viruses, particularly the porcine endogenous retrovirus