The Future of Animal-to-Human Organ Transplants

September 18, 2015

(Smithsonian) – Last month, surgeons at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in Bethesda, Maryland, managed to keep one of Revivicor’s genetically modified pig hearts alive inside a baboon’s stomach for 945 days. They were testing the baboon’s immune response to the foreign organ, not the pig heart’s ability to function as the animal’s heart. Humans share more than 90 percent of their DNA with baboons, so transplanting a pig organ into the primate is a step in the right direction.