Man given genetically modified pig heart dies
David Bennett, the first person in the world to get a heart transplant from a genetically-modified pig, has died after two months following the surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center in the USA.
His condition began to deteriorate a couple of days ago, BBC reports quoting his doctors in Baltimore, and the 57-year-old died on 8 March.
Bennett received the transplant on 7 January.
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The surgery, performed by a team at the University of Maryland Medicine, was among the first to demonstrate the feasibility of a pig-to-human heart transplant, a field made possible by new gene editing tools.
Bennett knew the risks attached to the surgery, acknowledging before the procedure it was "a shot in the dark".
The US Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorisation for the surgery on New Year's Eve through its compassionate use provision. It is used when an experimental medical product, in this case, the genetically-modified pig's heart, is the only avenue open for a patient with a serious or life-threatening medical condition.
Dr Bartley Griffith, director of the cardiac transplant programme at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), surgically transplanted the pig heart into the patient. He was assisted by one of the world's foremost experts on xenotransplantation, Dr Muhammad M. Mohiuddin Professor of Surgery at UMSOM.
Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company provided the genetically-modified pig to the xenotransplantation laboratory at UMSOM.
Pigs have long been a tantalising source of potential transplants because their organs are so similar to humans.
