The surgery was performed at the University of Maryland medical center by Dr Bartley Griffith Cardiac surgeon,a transplant expert for 40 years, following a special approval from US-FDA. He with his colleague Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, jointly run the school of medicine’s Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program, and working toward this goal for five years. Dr. Mohiuddin, a first generation immigrant.
cardiac surgeon from Pakistan, headed the surgery that extracted the heart from a year-old genetically modified pig raised at a facility in Virginia run by the company Revivicor. Revivicor is a subsidiary of PPL Therapeutics, known for making Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. Dr Mohiuddin has been working for the past 30 years in the field of xenotransplantation – both at the University of Maryland and National Institute of Health. He could not get funding from his University but instead was supported by the CEO of Revicor Martine Rothblatt for developing a pulmonary xenotransplantation program. Rothblatt’s daughter has Pulmonary Hypertension so is motivated to find solutions
Mohiuddin’s previously performed transplants of pig hearts into baboons and they were surviving nine hundred and fortyfive daysafter the surgery. This work helped persuade the US FDA to approve this surgery. Pigs are a preferred
xenotransplantation animal because their circulatory system and heart size is similar to humans and their valves are used routinely for surgical valve replacement.
Other snippets about the history of transplantation science:
In the 18th century poor people used to sell their teeth to rich for implantation. Many of us must have read about Brown Sequard syndrome in Physiology and Neurology. This French physicianscientist used to transplant mice tails to chicken in his backyard much to the horror of his neighbours. When he was in his seventies, he used to inject material from dog’s testicles to regain his “virility”.
Renal transplantation was first performed at Boston, USA between twin brothers by Dr Joseph Murray in the year 1954 but it g a i n e d w i d e r a c c e p t a n c e w i t h development of immunosuppression. Dr Murray has been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1990, 36 years after his first kidney transplant surgery.
Spain is the leader in organ transplantation – citizens here have to declare that they don’t want to donate their organs after death otherwise their organs would always be donated. Croatia is another country that leads in this model. Japan has lowest organ donation after death as they believe if a corpse is cremated without all its organs, it cannot be properly put to rest.
“The advantages of cardiac xenotransplantation might result in the gradual replacement of heart allotransplantation by xenotransplantation (at least) in resource-rich countries” – Dr David Cooper
