No Pig in a Poke

October 16, 2015

(The Economist) – Until now, though, two technical problems have stood in the way of routinely transplanting animal organs into people. One is that the recipient’s immune system must be persuaded to tolerate a big chunk of foreign tissue. The other is that swapping tissues between species risks swapping diseases, too. This second problem may soon be addressed, if George Church of the Harvard Medical School has his way. For, as he and his colleagues describe this week in Science, genetic engineering can now be used to eliminate one of the most worrying types of pathogen that might be spread via transplants.