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Monkey kept alive for 2 years with pig kidney offers hope for humans awaiting transplants

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By Karen Weintraub

A Massachusetts-based company announced Wednesday that it has kept a monkey alive for two years with a pig kidney, the longest an animal has survived with an organ from a different animal. The work marks another substantial step toward solving the human organ shortage by using animals as donors.

The pig donor is born with 69 gene edits, by far the largest number used in an experiment of this kind, performed to try to reduce the risk of rejection, improve survival and eliminate any chance of a pig virus passing to the organ’s new host. Read the article in USA Today.

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Neonatal kidney transplants may be missed opportunity in organ shortage

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By Shawn M. Carter

More than 12,000 of 21,000 infants who died in 2020 could have been considered as viable organ donors, according to data from researchers at Allegheny General Hospital.

“We believe that neonatal kidney transplantation offers a ‘game-changing’ solution to the organ shortage crisis,” Dai Nghiem, MD, of the Westminster, California-based hospital, said in a press release. “This study looked at the U.S. alone, but if you replicate the findings across the globe then we have a huge untapped pool of available organs for transplants.” Read the full article in Healio.

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Transplant medicine contends with organ shortage and pandemic-related disruptions

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By Caitlyn Stulpin

Transplant medicine and the field of transplant infectious diseases have faced numerous disruptions and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to experts.

“The number of transplants declined transiently during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic but are now at the pre-pandemic level and growing overall,” Sarah Taimur, MD, associate professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, told Healio | Infectious Disease News. Read the full story in Healio.

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Improving Transplant Equity by Bioengineering Organs for Transplants

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Could bioengineering organs for human organ transplants improve transplant equity and address the ongoing organ shortage?

May 01, 2023 – In a recent press release, CareDx Inc., based in Brisbane, CA, and Miromatrix Medical Inc., based in Eden Prairie, MN, announced a collaboration focused on researching bioengineered organs for human organ transplants. Tissue and organ bioengineering has been conceptualized for years, with many implications in improving transplant equity and addressing the shortage of organ donors. As researchers take steps closer to whole organ transplantation in humans, it is critical to understand the science behind bioengineering and how to minimize patient risk. Read more in Life Sciences Intelligence.

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