There is a drastic shortage of healthy organs, hearts, kidneys, livers etc, available for transplantation. It is estimated that about 180,000 people in the world, 6,500 in the UK alone are waiting for organ transplants. Less than one third of patients waiting for transplants will receive them in time to save their lives.
One of the ways that scientists hope to overcome this tragic situation is to transplant organs from pigs to humans, so called xenotransplantation. The animals have to genetically engineered so that the human immune system does not recognise the donated organs as foreign and reject them.
Imutran, a company based in Cambridge, has genetically engineered pigs whose organs are less likely to be rejected when transplanted into humans. Following the success in cloning Dolly the sheep, scientists at another British company, PPL Therapeutics, have successfully cloned five piglets. Pigs are the favoured animal for xenotransplantation but are more difficult to clone than sheep.
Scientists hope that by using these two techniques, genetic engineering and xenotransplantation, they may soon be able to provide a solution the chronic lack transplant organs.
