Towards Safe and Compatible Organs for Transplantation

The shortage of organs for transplantation is a major barrier to the treatment of organ failure. Although porcine organs are considered promising resources for human transplant, their use has been checked by concerns about the transmission of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) to humans and pig-human immunological incompatibility. We engineered primary cell lines at multiple loci, and used somatic cell nuclear transfer to produce pigs with advanced genotypes for xenotransplantation.