Lawrence Faucette, the second living person to receive a genetically modified pig heart in a transplant, has died six weeks after the experimental procedure. The University of Maryland Medical Center, where the experimental procedure had been performed, said the heart began to show signs of rejection in recent days.
It’s not really an investment thing from my POV. Sure, throwing money at it will speed up research a bit, but there are a huge number of challenges that need to be overcome first, the biggest of these would probably be tissue perfusion - cells tend to die due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. Way too many issues with printing right now.
Xenografts are a safer and quicker bet right now because you need to consider immunogenics anyway - if you can’t make pig hearts work, you likely won’t get patient-specific implants to work either. It’s not quite as easy as just 3D-Printing patient stem cells.
It’s not really an investment thing from my POV. Sure, throwing money at it will speed up research a bit, but there are a huge number of challenges that need to be overcome first, the biggest of these would probably be tissue perfusion - cells tend to die due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. Way too many issues with printing right now. Xenografts are a safer and quicker bet right now because you need to consider immunogenics anyway - if you can’t make pig hearts work, you likely won’t get patient-specific implants to work either. It’s not quite as easy as just 3D-Printing patient stem cells.