Could ‘Franken-organs’ cure diabetes?
SCIENTISTS have cured diabetes in mice – by giving them organs grown in rats.
it is the first time an inter-species organ transplant has successfully treated a medical condition.
the breakthrough is seen as proof that ‘spare-part surgery’ could one day be used to overcome diseases in humans.
Being able to grow human organs in larger species such as pigs or sheep would make transplant waiting lists a thing of the past.
But critics say such ‘Frankenscience’ is unnatural, and people should instead be encouraged to donate their organs.
the study by Stanford University in the US and the University of tokyo worked by creating a ‘chimera’ – a rat carrying mouse genes. Rat embryos were injected with mouse stem cells. When the rats were born, they had a pancreas that was genetically that of a mouse, with the exception of the blood vessels.
Around 100 pancreatic islets, the tissues that create insulin, were taken from the rat pancreases and transplanted into diabetic mice. typically when transplants take place, patients need to take ongoing doses of immunosuppressant drugs to stop their immune system rejecting the ‘foreign’ organs.
But the mice only needed drugs for five days to stop the organs being rejected. the transplanted islets successfully controlled the mice’s blood sugar levels for over 370 days, the researchers found.
tests after ten months showed that all of the remaining rat cells had been eliminated by the mice’s immune systems.
Hiromitsu nakauchi, a genetics professor at Stanford, said: ‘this is very promising for our hope to transplant human organs grown in animals because it suggests that any contaminating animal cells could be eliminated by the patient’s immune system after transplant.’
the transplantation of functional pancreatic islets has also been shown to be a potentially viable option to treat diabetes in humans, as long as rejection can be avoided. the researchers, who published their findings in the journal nature, now hope to grow kidneys, livers and lungs. Last night Robin Lovell Badge, of biomedical research centre the Francis crick institute, said: ‘this is interesting and potentially important research
‘it is a very long way from practical applications for humans, but the work is a good demonstration of the principles involved and it points to ... the successes of the approach.’
But a spokesman for pressure group People for the ethical treatment of Animals said: ‘Finding organs for people in desperate need of them is a laudable goal, and we can...do this by encouraging more people to register to be organ donors, not by pouring research money into monstrous Frankenscience.’