A Maryland man who died of no apparent cause two months after receiving the first-ever genetically-modified pig heart transplant may have fallen victim to a pig virus linked to the failed transplant, the patient’s doctor has found, according to MIT Technology Review.
Highlights
- David Bennett Sr, who had terminal heart disease, received the cross-species transplant on January 7 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, and he initially appeared to be responding well before unexpectedly deteriorating and to die on March 8.
- Dr. Bartley Griffith, Bennett’s transplant surgeon, told an American Society of Transplantation webinar last month that the heart was infected with porcine cytomegalovirus, which may have caused Bennett’s death. Bennett, the MIT Technology Review reported Wednesday.
- This virus, which can cause respiratory symptoms and pregnancy complications in pigs, has been linked to failed organ transplants between pigs and baboons.
- The pig was bred by the biotechnology company Revivicor, which modified the pig’s genome to reduce the risk of rejection of the heart by Bennett’s body and to prevent excessive tissue growth after transplantation.
- If the virus caused Bennett’s death, it represents an obstacle that can likely be overcome in future operations, Griffith reportedly said during the webinar.
- Revivicor declined to comment on the virus to MIT Technology Review, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.
Key Context
The possibility of a pig virus adapting to infect humans following transplantation worries researchers, who hope that cross-species transplants may one day help solve the severe shortage of human organ donors. Due to the risk of transmission of dangerous cross-species diseases, recipients of animal transplants and their personal contacts – including pets – should be checked at regular intervals, a group of transplant researchers said in a paper published in 2013 by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). However, porcine cytomegalovirus is not thought to infect humans, Jay Fishman, a specialist in transplant-related infections at Massachusetts General Hospital, told MIT Technology Review. Baboons have been used to test pig-to-human transplantation techniques, and have shown the danger posed by porcine cytomegalovirus. A 2015 study published by NCBI found that kidney transplants between pigs and baboons failed nearly four times faster when the virus was present, and a 2020 study by Nature found that heart transplants between pigs and baboons with the virus failed quickly, while transplants without the virus could last more than six months. The Nature study authors said the infected hearts had extremely high levels of the virus, possibly due to intentional inhibition of the baboon’s immune system during the transplant or due to the absence of the immune system. pork, which might have been better suited to suppress a virus specific to pork. According to the researchers, a human who received a heart infected with porcine cytomegalovirus would most likely have experienced the same reduction in survival time.
Article translated from Forbes US – Author: Zachary Snowdon Smith
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