10 ms·

Scientists have successfully transplanted a bioengineered lung into a pig

274 points by Teever 8y ago

vfulco2 8y ago
This technology could not come any sooner. I lost my 37 year old wife to metastatic cancer. We were able to arrest the spread and even shrink the primary areas with established treatments but due to the vascularization of the lungs, could not get them disease free and that's what killed her. The thought of having had the chance to replace her lungs and let the biotechnology wipe out the malignant cells everywhere else is a prayer for patients and caregivers alike. Keep up the good fight dear scientists.
- uptownfunk 8y ago
  My condolences for your loss.. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.. hats off to the researchers for the accomplishment. Does anyone know the process that would take this from pig to human?
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > Does anyone know the process that would take this from pig to human? Pre-clinical studies on animals, then the usual clinical trial series from Phase I to III on humans. And depending on the sample size required by authorities for approval, and how fast they can produce and transplant lungs, it could take 10 years or likely longer.
    - point78 8y ago
      Scientist in the article says we could see one in patients as soon as 5 years
      - dplgk 8y ago
        Trial patients?
        ekianjo 8y ago
        Yes, I think that's what they meant.
- PunchTornado 8y ago
  thinking about all the nonsense some so called scientists are spreading: lets stop this research until all the ethical questions are answered.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - givehimagun 8y ago
    What ethical issues? The pigs? We kill 300k every single day in the US...that's 3.5/second.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't break the HN guidelines by tossing flamebait into threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we just had to warn you about this a few hours ago. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so would you please review the guidelines and use the site as intended? The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
duckerude 8y ago
> Investigators used a cocktail of sugar and detergent to get rid of all the cells and blood vessels from a lung taken from a donor pig. This left behind a support scaffold made from proteins - the lung's "skeleton" if you like. If I'm reading this correctly, a donor is still needed, and the main advance is that the lung is less likely to be rejected because the cells match the recipient.
- Engineering-MD 8y ago
  I’m not sure how well this works with lungs, but for less vital tissues (ligaments, cartilage for instance) it allows animal tissues to be used in humans. Instead of needing a human organ, you could potentially remove the cells from a pig organ and then be repopulated by human cells.
- Drakim 8y ago
  I imagine that this just happens an easy way to get a "scaffold" to build the lung on for the moment being.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    I think, the scaffold is an extremely important part of the process, it has chemical and physical signals which allow stem cells to develop properly. I haven’t heard of a plastic scaffold being used except in Macchiarini scandal, where the patients either died or had to have their artificial windpipe replaced. And that was for a windpipe which is a layered 2D structure, not something like a lung with an enormously complicated 3D vasculature. I suspect artificial scaffolds will be far more difficult than the process covered here.
    - _0ffh 8y ago
      Your comment prompted me to find out about the Macchiarini scandal, which I had not previously been aware of. That's some seriously scary shit that went down there! When your experimental technique fails - again and again - and multiple people die - one after another - and you still go on doing it... that's just sick. Or dedication, I presume.
throwawy3589 8y ago
This is why I don't support universal health care. Health care is expensive because of basic supply and demand, everybody needs health care and doctors and drugs are expensive to train/develop. Government regulation can't just magically make a few million nurses and doctors appear, can't make cancer drugs develop themselves. It will only kill investment and innovation in the medical field. Investing trillions in universal health care would just be wasted money on a shitty system, like trying to make horses faster rather than inventing the car and plane. The solution to affordable healthcare will be a combination of AI for diagnosis and surgery plus cloning and stem cells for organ transplants. People need to be patient and put things in perspective, 100 years ago the richest person on earth could die from an infected scratch because we didn't have antibiotics. We've come very far in a short period of time.
- yoavm 8y ago
  How are these two things contradicting? You can have universal health care and still have the rich paying for private services and research, with their own money and with their taxes. (In my country we have a relatively-to-the-US wonderful UHC system, and we still see a lot of research, experiments, competition and innovation)
  - throwawy3589 8y ago
    The funding for universal health care would have to come from somewhere, probably higher taxes. So instead of being invested, the money would be stuffed into an inefficient system. There's also the matter of scale, US system would be far larger than any individual Euro country and thus more expensive due to bureaucracy. Also the issue of the US having much lower population density and how to handle that, ie are rural people going to have to drive 5 hours to get the health care their taxes pay for? Also worth noting that the US is essentially the profit center for the entire world's pharma industry. If that was eliminated investment would be reduced globally, not just the US. US citizens are currently subsidizing European countries public healthcare. https://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe-2112662 https://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe...
dghughes 8y ago
My dad has COPD and IPF he's still going with (very expensive) medication but it's taking a toll. It sounds great to live but living well is the goal. Lung transplants are great but most lung disease occur decades later after a long career especially blue collar jobs where a person is exposed to many irritants not toxic but cause cumulative damage. Although anecdotal sailors (Navy, Coast Guard) for some reason have an unusually high rates of lung disease mainly COPD and IPF. Lung transplants if possible cut certain nerves and the transplant recipient no longer has a cough reflex due to cutting vagal nerve fibers. But it seems it's possible it can recover, maybe only for younger patients. I think the recent articles about mitochondria transfer from muscle tissue to damaged tissue is more promising. It would be nice to see some studies on that involving lung tissue.
victor106 8y ago
The exciting thing about this is what other organs can be developed using this technique.
textor 8y ago
While this is fascinating, I wonder if we could produce the scaffolding itself de novo, and if not, then why? It's not a living thing, just a porous biocompatible structure. At worst, we could grow a lot of skin and process it into scaffolding of arbitrary shape. Or is there some crucial trick, such as remaining chemical signals that guide the development of new cells?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  I could see tolerances being an issue there are a lot of fine structures - even if we could shape the protein scaffolds successfully lungs would be far more complex than say a bladder.
mentos 8y ago
Curious to see if they’ll ever be able to produce a scaffold without a donor lung to strip down
detcader 8y ago
Did the pigs need the transplants, like were they sick? (I can't access the article's supplementary materials)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

274 points by Teever 8y ago

This technology could not come any sooner. I lost my 37 year old wife to metastatic cancer. We were able to arrest the spread and even shrink the primary areas with established treatments but due to the vascularization of the lungs, could not get them disease free and that's what killed her. The thought of having had the chance to replace her lungs and let the biotechnology wipe out the malignant cells everywhere else is a prayer for patients and caregivers alike. Keep up the good fight dear scientists.

uptownfunk 8y ago
My condolences for your loss.. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.. hats off to the researchers for the accomplishment. Does anyone know the process that would take this from pig to human?
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > Does anyone know the process that would take this from pig to human? Pre-clinical studies on animals, then the usual clinical trial series from Phase I to III on humans. And depending on the sample size required by authorities for approval, and how fast they can produce and transplant lungs, it could take 10 years or likely longer.
  - point78 8y ago
    Scientist in the article says we could see one in patients as soon as 5 years
    - dplgk 8y ago
      Trial patients?
      - ekianjo 8y ago
        Yes, I think that's what they meant.
PunchTornado 8y ago
thinking about all the nonsense some so called scientists are spreading: lets stop this research until all the ethical questions are answered.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- givehimagun 8y ago
  What ethical issues? The pigs? We kill 300k every single day in the US...that's 3.5/second.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't break the HN guidelines by tossing flamebait into threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we just had to warn you about this a few hours ago. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so would you please review the guidelines and use the site as intended? The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

duckerude 8y ago

> Investigators used a cocktail of sugar and detergent to get rid of all the cells and blood vessels from a lung taken from a donor pig. This left behind a support scaffold made from proteins - the lung's "skeleton" if you like. If I'm reading this correctly, a donor is still needed, and the main advance is that the lung is less likely to be rejected because the cells match the recipient.

Engineering-MD 8y ago
I’m not sure how well this works with lungs, but for less vital tissues (ligaments, cartilage for instance) it allows animal tissues to be used in humans. Instead of needing a human organ, you could potentially remove the cells from a pig organ and then be repopulated by human cells.
Drakim 8y ago
I imagine that this just happens an easy way to get a "scaffold" to build the lung on for the moment being.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  I think, the scaffold is an extremely important part of the process, it has chemical and physical signals which allow stem cells to develop properly. I haven’t heard of a plastic scaffold being used except in Macchiarini scandal, where the patients either died or had to have their artificial windpipe replaced. And that was for a windpipe which is a layered 2D structure, not something like a lung with an enormously complicated 3D vasculature. I suspect artificial scaffolds will be far more difficult than the process covered here.
  - _0ffh 8y ago
    Your comment prompted me to find out about the Macchiarini scandal, which I had not previously been aware of. That's some seriously scary shit that went down there! When your experimental technique fails - again and again - and multiple people die - one after another - and you still go on doing it... that's just sick. Or dedication, I presume.

throwawy3589 8y ago

This is why I don't support universal health care. Health care is expensive because of basic supply and demand, everybody needs health care and doctors and drugs are expensive to train/develop. Government regulation can't just magically make a few million nurses and doctors appear, can't make cancer drugs develop themselves. It will only kill investment and innovation in the medical field. Investing trillions in universal health care would just be wasted money on a shitty system, like trying to make horses faster rather than inventing the car and plane. The solution to affordable healthcare will be a combination of AI for diagnosis and surgery plus cloning and stem cells for organ transplants. People need to be patient and put things in perspective, 100 years ago the richest person on earth could die from an infected scratch because we didn't have antibiotics. We've come very far in a short period of time.

yoavm 8y ago
How are these two things contradicting? You can have universal health care and still have the rich paying for private services and research, with their own money and with their taxes. (In my country we have a relatively-to-the-US wonderful UHC system, and we still see a lot of research, experiments, competition and innovation)
- throwawy3589 8y ago
  The funding for universal health care would have to come from somewhere, probably higher taxes. So instead of being invested, the money would be stuffed into an inefficient system. There's also the matter of scale, US system would be far larger than any individual Euro country and thus more expensive due to bureaucracy. Also the issue of the US having much lower population density and how to handle that, ie are rural people going to have to drive 5 hours to get the health care their taxes pay for? Also worth noting that the US is essentially the profit center for the entire world's pharma industry. If that was eliminated investment would be reduced globally, not just the US. US citizens are currently subsidizing European countries public healthcare. https://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe-2112662 https://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe...

dghughes 8y ago

My dad has COPD and IPF he's still going with (very expensive) medication but it's taking a toll. It sounds great to live but living well is the goal. Lung transplants are great but most lung disease occur decades later after a long career especially blue collar jobs where a person is exposed to many irritants not toxic but cause cumulative damage. Although anecdotal sailors (Navy, Coast Guard) for some reason have an unusually high rates of lung disease mainly COPD and IPF. Lung transplants if possible cut certain nerves and the transplant recipient no longer has a cough reflex due to cutting vagal nerve fibers. But it seems it's possible it can recover, maybe only for younger patients. I think the recent articles about mitochondria transfer from muscle tissue to damaged tissue is more promising. It would be nice to see some studies on that involving lung tissue.

victor106 8y ago

The exciting thing about this is what other organs can be developed using this technique.

textor 8y ago

While this is fascinating, I wonder if we could produce the scaffolding itself de novo, and if not, then why? It's not a living thing, just a porous biocompatible structure. At worst, we could grow a lot of skin and process it into scaffolding of arbitrary shape. Or is there some crucial trick, such as remaining chemical signals that guide the development of new cells?

Nasrudith 8y ago
I could see tolerances being an issue there are a lot of fine structures - even if we could shape the protein scaffolds successfully lungs would be far more complex than say a bladder.

mentos 8y ago

Curious to see if they’ll ever be able to produce a scaffold without a donor lung to strip down

detcader 8y ago

Did the pigs need the transplants, like were they sick? (I can't access the article's supplementary materials)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]