
Scientists have successfully transplanted a bioengineered lung into a pig - Teever
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45046674
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vfulco2
This technology could not come any sooner. I lost my 37 year old wife to
metastatic cancer. We were able to arrest the spread and even shrink the
primary areas with established treatments but due to the vascularization of
the lungs, could not get them disease free and that's what killed her. The
thought of having had the chance to replace her lungs and let the
biotechnology wipe out the malignant cells everywhere else is a prayer for
patients and caregivers alike. Keep up the good fight dear scientists.

~~~
PunchTornado
thinking about all the nonsense some so called scientists are spreading: lets
stop this research until all the ethical questions are answered.

~~~
givehimagun
What ethical issues? The pigs? We kill 300k every single day in the
US...that's 3.5/second.

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duckerude
> Investigators used a cocktail of sugar and detergent to get rid of all the
> cells and blood vessels from a lung taken from a donor pig. This left behind
> a support scaffold made from proteins - the lung's "skeleton" if you like.

If I'm reading this correctly, a donor is still needed, and the main advance
is that the lung is less likely to be rejected because the cells match the
recipient.

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point78
The difference here is before the donor had to be a near perfect fit. With
this method they can build the scaffolding from any dead body then use
recipients cells for the tissue.

So we go from a couple thousand lung transplants a year with 50% mortality to
potentially unlimited and much lower mortality (don't really know the
mortality rate here but so far looks promising and better than).

~~~
simcop2387
Along with that, the fact that the scaffolding isn't living cells means that
they can likely preserve the lungs for longer periods of time for future
recipients too. That should be a massive boon for transplants since they'll no
longer need to be a "Get here in 30 minutes or the organ won't be viable long
enough" kind of situation.

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TheSpiceIsLife
Additionally the donor doesn't necessarily have to be human.

If pig lungs are a good enough a fit.

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userbinator
Pig lungs are extemely close to human lungs --- that's why a lot of such
research is done on them.

Looks like the age of chimeras is upon us.

~~~
rcxdude
It's already here to an extent. Pig heart valves have already been
transplanted into humans.

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dghughes
My dad has COPD and IPF he's still going with (very expensive) medication but
it's taking a toll. It sounds great to live but living well is the goal.

Lung transplants are great but most lung disease occur decades later after a
long career especially blue collar jobs where a person is exposed to many
irritants not toxic but cause cumulative damage. Although anecdotal sailors
(Navy, Coast Guard) for some reason have an unusually high rates of lung
disease mainly COPD and IPF.

Lung transplants if possible cut certain nerves and the transplant recipient
no longer has a cough reflex due to cutting vagal nerve fibers. But it seems
it's possible it can recover, maybe only for younger patients.

I think the recent articles about mitochondria transfer from muscle tissue to
damaged tissue is more promising. It would be nice to see some studies on that
involving lung tissue.

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victor106
The exciting thing about this is what other organs can be developed using this
technique.

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textor
While this is fascinating, I wonder if we could produce the scaffolding itself
_de novo_ , and if not, then why? It's not a living thing, just a porous
biocompatible structure. At worst, we could grow a lot of skin and process it
into scaffolding of arbitrary shape. Or is there some crucial trick, such as
remaining chemical signals that guide the development of new cells?

~~~
Nasrudith
I could see tolerances being an issue there are a lot of fine structures -
even if we could shape the protein scaffolds successfully lungs would be far
more complex than say a bladder.

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mentos
Curious to see if they’ll ever be able to produce a scaffold without a donor
lung to strip down

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detcader
Did the pigs need the transplants, like were they sick? (I can't access the
article's supplementary materials)

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throwawy3589
This is why I don't support universal health care. Health care is expensive
because of basic supply and demand, everybody needs health care and doctors
and drugs are expensive to train/develop. Government regulation can't just
magically make a few million nurses and doctors appear, can't make cancer
drugs develop themselves. It will only kill investment and innovation in the
medical field.

Investing trillions in universal health care would just be wasted money on a
shitty system, like trying to make horses faster rather than inventing the car
and plane. The solution to affordable healthcare will be a combination of AI
for diagnosis and surgery plus cloning and stem cells for organ transplants.

People need to be patient and put things in perspective, 100 years ago the
richest person on earth could die from an infected scratch because we didn't
have antibiotics. We've come very far in a short period of time.

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bootloop
I mean I don't blame you. A system which worked for you in the past because of
your privileges will continue to work for you and will be able to offer you
even greater services because you are able to pay for it. Just a damn shame
for people who can't afford it. Too bad.

Wait. I do blame you. I also want to remind you that people die in civilised
countries of illnesses which can be cured but they can't afford it. And it's
because of people which are full of ignorance.

~~~
throwawy3589
Idealists like you are why 100 million+ died due to communism in the 20th
century.

We've gone from borderline stone-age medical treatment where basic surgery was
impossible and simple infections untreatable to where we are today in less
than a century. Is everything perfect right now? No, but it's improving
steadily and I think with the current advances affordable health care will be
possible within the next 10-20 years without government mandating it.

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your-nanny
this is historically illiterate, and frankly insulting. if there is any starry
eyed idealist here it's.. you.

~~~
dang
Please don't violate the site guidelines regardless of how bad another comment
is. That only makes things worse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

