
New life for pig-to-human transplants - DrScump
http://www.nature.com/news/new-life-for-pig-to-human-transplants-1.18768
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stephengillie
I'm not too sure about using immunosuppression and gene editing to make organs
cross-species transplantable. I'm a fan of the method that washes the pig
cells off the organ's protein scaffold, then takes a few cells from the
patient and grows them on the scaffold to make a new native organ. The way
described in the article just seems like a less elegant process, is it cheaper
or easier in some way?

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dnautics
Cheaper, in the long run. Why bother with that scaffold and seeding and all
that when you can just take the organ straight out of the animal.

Plus you still have to gm the pig. For example there's an allergen n-glycolyl
neuraminic acid which is present in most extracellular matrix proteins that
will be in the scaffold.

