Scientists Successfully Grows Human Organs In Pigs

Human organs can be grown within animal bodies and help providing transplantable lungs, hearts, kidneys and other parts. A small success has been achieved.

A research paper published in the Cell journal reveals researchers have successfully generated human cells and human tissues in the embryos of pigs and cattle by using stem cell technologies.

Researcher Dr. Jun Wu said, “Species evolve independently, and many factors dictating the developmental programs might have diverged, which makes it difficult to blend cells from one species to a developing embryo from another… The larger the evolutionary distance, the more difficult for them to mix.”

Wu is a staff scientist in the gene expression laboratory at the Salk Institute and also the first author of the paper.

Senior author of the research, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, said imitating nature is not easy.

Belmonte is a professor in Salk’s gene expression laboratory.

Growing organ cells of one animal into another animal’s body is termed as a chimera, which means organism containing cells from two or more species.

The project of growing human organs in animal’s body started with chimera, with rats and mice in which a mouse embryo was grown without a pancreas.

Some other scientists too carried out similar work and was among those is Hiromitsu Jakauchi. He is currently at Stanford. He grew rat pancreas inside a mouse.