(Yicai) March 15 -- A team of Chinese researchers successfully transplanted the liver of a gene-edited pig into a brain-dead subject to mimic the treatment of a patient with liver failure. This is the world’s first publicly reported case of pig-to-human liver xenotransplantation.

A team co-led by Dou Kefeng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tao Kaishan, director of the Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery at Xijing Hospital affiliated with Air Force Medical University, completed the transplant on March 10, the Xi’an-based university announced yesterday.

The transplanted liver has been working for 96 hours after the blood flow was restored in the subject’s body, and no hyperacute rejection was reported, Air Force Medical University noted.

The gene-edited pig used in the liver transplant was provided by Chengdu-based Clonorgan Biotechnology, the university said in an article, adding that the researchers used gene-editing technology to remove three pig antigens that cause rejection and replace them with three human proteins.

There are 300,000 to 500,000 new patients with liver failure in China every year, and liver transplantation is the only effective cure, Air Force Medical University noted in the article. However, the number of organs donated by humans is far smaller than the demand, so carrying out xenotransplantation research is of great importance, it pointed out.

Research on organ xenotransplantation has achieved great progress in recent years. US researchers completed two pig-to-human heart xenotransplantation, successfully helping the patients extending their life. They also carried out several experiments with brain-dead subjects for the transplant of kidneys from gene-edited pigs.

Compared with the kidney and heart, the anatomy and physiological functions of the liver are more complex, so livers of gene-edited pigs cannot completely replace human ones at present, said Dou. But this brain-dead recipient experiment provides a theoretical basis and data support for the clinical application of xenotransplantation, he added.

The team led by Dou and Tao has been experimenting with xenotransplants for 11 years. It had previously completed multiple organ transplants from pigs to monkeys.

Editor: Futura Costaglione