Doctor
A gene-edited pig with only 7 kg was successfully transplanted to 4 recipient monkeys at the transplant site. This is almost a "hard core" whim that only appears in science fiction movies, but it has recently become a reality in the hands of the expert team of Xijing Hospital of the Air Force Military Medical University! What problems do you need to overcome to achieve such an unheard-of-telling idea? What "black technologies" has the expert team of Xijing Hospital used? The reporter now takes you to learn more about it.
On the morning of October 25, the reporter learned from the Xijing Hospital of the Air Force Military Medical University that the first international six-gene edited pig-monkey multi-organ and multi-tissue combined transplant surgery led by Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Dou Kefeng of the hospital, led by hepatobiliary surgery, urology, cardiovascular surgery, anesthesia and perioperative medicine, orthopedics, burn and dermatology, ophthalmology, experimental surgery and other 20 disciplines were successful, achieving a breakthrough in multi-organ and multi-tissue transplantation in the field of xenoorgan transplantation. The
transplant surgery was carried out on October 16 and ended in 14 hours. The research team obtained three organs of liver, heart, and kidney of pigs, as well as three tissues of corneal, skin, and bones, and four recipient monkeys performed liver and kidney combined transplantation, heart transplantation, heart transplantation, corneal and skin transplantation, and bone transplantation at the same time. For different specialties and different surgical procedures, the expert team implements individual anesthesia to accurately regulate physiological indicators. After the transplanted organ resumes blood flow, bile and urine can be seen flowing out of the liver and kidneys; the transplanted heart immediately resumes beating, and is regular and powerful; the transplanted tablets and implant beds are transparent after corneal transplantation, and the intraocular pressure is normal; after the skin transplantation, the transplanted skin tablets have good blood flow; the bone cartilage is tightly bound and healed well after the osteocartilage transplantation. As of press time, the four recipient monkeys, transplanted organs and tissues were in good condition.
Speaking of the difficulties of this project, Academician Dou Kefeng introduced that they have experienced five major difficulties, namely: difficult surgery, only 7 kg of donor pigs and 10 kg of recipient monkeys, different physiological and comprehension anatomy, fine blood vessel diameter (2-3mm), and microscopic sutures are required; difficult management, the recipient monkey cannot communicate in language, poor compliance, difficult intubation, and need to observe changes in the condition at any time, prevent bites and scratches; difficult medication, the monkey's drug treatment window is narrow, and more use is used, less use will cause adverse consequences; difficult infusion, the infusion of liquid needs to be strictly controlled, and it needs to be accurate to every minute and drop; difficult blood transfusion, the blood type of monkey is not easy to obtain, and the blood type identification method is special and the blood volume is small.
In recent years, with the advancement of surgical technology, homogeneous organ transplantation has become a routine treatment for many end-stage diseases. The long-term survival rate and quality of life of patients after transplantation have been continuously improved, but the shortage of donors seriously restricts the development of organ transplantation. Because the organ tissue structure, physiological function and size of pigs are similar to that of human organs, gene-edited pigs are the best donor as xenogeneic organ transplantation.
At present, international research on xenogeneic tissues and organ transplantation with gene-edited pigs as donors has progressed rapidly. Some preclinical trials have been carried out, but most of them are single tissues or organ transplants. For pigs with different tissues and organs obtained from the same donor, and joint transplantation of xenogeneic multi-organs and multiple tissues at the same time has not been reported internationally. In order to explore and solve the problem of multi-organ failure and at the same time maximize the role of donor pigs, Xijing Hospital conducted the above research. After searching, this operation was the first internationally-engaged pig-monkey multi-organ and multi-tissue joint transplantation, which further expanded and confirmed the possible scope of application of xenografts in the future, and provided scientific data and technical reserves for first aid for patients with donor shortage and organ failure. (Text/Photo Xi'an Newspaper All-Media Reporter Gao Rui Correspondent Li Jie Zhang Xuan)
Source: Xi'an News Network
