Scientists have successfully grown humanized kidneys in pigs, a ground-breaking scientific accomplishment that opens the door to the potential of developing human organs inside animals.
This revolutionary feat involved the creation of human-pig chimeric embryos, combining human and pig cells. When implanted into surrogate pig mothers, these embryos developed kidneys primarily composed of human cells, marking a historic milestone in organ growth research.
Quest to Grow Human Organs in Pigs
Senior author Liangxue Lai, hailing from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wuyi University, remarked that rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats. Still, previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded. Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs.
Though these humanized kidneys are a significant breakthrough, they are not entirely suitable for transplantation due to the inclusion of pig vasculature and nerves. The challenge of developing wholly human organs remains uncertain with genetic engineering techniques.
Professor Dusko Ilic, a King’s College London stem cell scientist, commended the pioneering work but cautioned against expecting clinical applications shortly. “As the authors admitted, there are plenty of challenges,” he stated. “Will this approach prove to be the ultimate solution? Only time holds the answer.”
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Humanized Kidney Development
Beyond the kidneys, the embryos remained predominantly pig-cell-dominated, with few human cells in the brain and central nervous system. The ethical implications of humanized brain development in hybrid seeds raise concerns and contribute to strict legal restrictions on such research in many countries.
In the UK, introducing human embryonic cells into animal embryos is permissible, but further development within an animal mother is prohibited.
Previous attempts at creating human-pig hybrids failed as pig cells usually outcompeted human cells during development, resulting in predominantly pig-like chimeras.
This latest research, published in Cell Stem Cell, overcame this challenge by genetically modifying a single-cell pig embryo to lack two genes essential for kidney development, creating a space for human embryonic stem cells to integrate into the pig embryo.
Following cultivation in the lab, the chimeric embryos were transferred to 13 surrogate sows. The gestation was terminated after 25 or 28 days, and the seeds were examined. These embryos displayed structurally normal kidneys for their stage of development, comprising 50-60% human cells, with human neural cells found in the brain and spinal cord.
Developing a fully human kidney within a pig remains complex, likely taking many years. Researchers would need to engineer pigs more intricately, a challenge with additional complexities.
The primary hurdle lies in allowing human nerves and vasculature to develop within the target organ without inadvertently generating a humanized brain, a theoretical challenge that requires further exploration.
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