A 4-week-old pig embryo injected with human pluripotent stem cellsSALK INSTITUTE
Researchers may one day overcome the problem of organ shortages for transplantation by growing spare human organs in other animals. A group led by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has taken the first big step toward making this a reality: today (January 26) in Cell, they report having grown the first human-pig chimeric embryos.
The team, led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, began by creating rat-mouse chimeras—a feat first accomplished in 2010, when scientists in Japan successfully produced a mouse with a pancreas developed from rat pluripotent stem cells. For the present study, Izpisua Belmonte’s group took the experiment one step further, using CRISPR-Cas9 to delete the genes in mice that coded not only for the pancreas, but other organs, such as ...