Design and testing of a humanized porcine donor for xenotransplantation

Have explored the promise of porcine organs for human transplantation. To proceed to human studies, a clinically ready porcine donor must be engineered and its xenograft successfully tested in nonhuman primates. Here we describe the design, creation and long-term life-supporting function of kidney grafts from a genetically engineered porcine donor transplanted into a cynomolgus monkey model. The porcine donor was engineered to carry 69 genomic edits, eliminating glycan antigens, overexpressing human transgenes and inactivating porcine endogenous retroviruses. In vitro functional analyses showed that the edited kidney endothelial cells modulated inflammation to an extent that was indistinguishable from that of…

• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: OD011106, P51 OD011106, 5T32AI007529
• NI
  National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases