Organ Transplant: Genetic Modification Could be the way to go

Perhaps this is peculiar to the Nigerian social media space, but For a couple of years now, the social media space seems to be awash with posts relating to people with health challenges who require one or two financial assistance to take care of their conditions. A large percentage of the posts have to do with kidney or liver issues.

In actual fact, with technology getting more and more sophisticated, human lives have followed suit and one of the ripple effects are sophisticated health challenges to complement. Millions of people are on the waiting list for organ donation in different hospitals worldwide and the Black Market for organs seems to be flourishing much more than before.

Whenever I see people who can hardly afford basic medical bills soliciting public assistance in order to undergo an organ transplant, the first thing that comes to my mind is if they are aware that they might have to do it again some years into the future. I mean, the body eventually rejects what is not hers, meaning that transplanted organs cannot stay functional perpetually in their hosts.

According to several sources, including the blood and transplant unit of National Health Service, transplanted kidneys have a limited number of periods they can stay functional in their new hosts. The period of a transplanted kidney will use depends on whether it was from a living or a deceased donor.

For a kidney donated by someone living, the average life span has been reported to be between 20 to 25 years while those donated by deceased persons only last between 15 to 20 years.^source A variant of the same report, however, gave an estimated average life span of transplanted kidneys to be between 10 to 12 years. ^source

When it comes to liver transplants, however, it is a different ball game entirely as liver transplant recipients have been reported to live normally 30 years after their transplants ^source, although outliers will never cease to depending on certain factors. According to a research by John Hopskin Medicine, the survival of heart transplant patients depends on their age with younger patients more likely to live a decade longer than older patients.

^{By Global Panorama on flicker}

Be it a kidney, liver, or heart transplant, the overall trend is that the longevity of transplanted organs depends largely on due adherence to the immunosuppressant drug regimes that patients are subjected to after their surgeries. Like I pointed out earlier, the body's immune system is designed in such a way that it attacks and eventually rejects anything foreign to it. In actual fact, there are health deficiencies associated with the body's immune system attacking its own healthy cells. Such abnormalities are usually known as autoimmune diseases.

Is Genetic modification the way to go?

The entire scientific world was shaken by the news of the successful transplanting of a pig's heart into a human. According to the report, the 57-year-old man had terminal heart disease and it was just a matter of months, weeks, or even days until he takes his last breath if a new heart is not found. Hence, the decision to transplant a pig's heart into the man was taken as a last resort.

Knowing that there is a couple of genetic dissimilarities between pigs and humans, the pig's heart was genetically modified before being transplanted into the man. Basically, some of the pig's genes that could lead to the heart being rejected outrightly by the body of humans were turned off and a couple of human genes were embedded. According to MIT technology review:

Ten genes in the donor pig were altered before the transplant could take place. Three of these genes cause human bodies to reject pig organs, so these were knocked out. Six genes were inserted to help control immune acceptance of the pig heart, and one additional gene was knocked out to stop excessive growth of the pig heart tissue. ^source

If genes could be altered in pig's organs to reduce the likelihood of their rejection by the human system, I wonder if these human organs themselves can be modified to reduce their chances of being rejected in the body of other humans. This is aside from taking immunosuppressant drugs as a post-surgery treatment.

All eyes will now be on the new bride of the scientific world in the person of David Bennet to see if everything will go well after the surgery. For now, the signs are looking good and the patient is recovering normally as would a patient that receives a human heart transplant.

With the world experiencing a shortage of organs and more and more people joining the organ donor waiting list, this breakthrough may be all that is needed. It is about time that the human organ black market folds up and operators shift their attention to the rearing of pigs.

What do you think?