The devices, which could one day treat children with esophageal atresia and short bowel, were recently tested in pigs.

After losing his genitals in a roadside bomb explosion, the soldier endured a 14-hour surgery to have a donated penis, scrotum, and partial abdominal wall attached.

The goal is to house patients’ follicles in a specially designed tissue matrix and reinsert them after treatment.

The group calls for the retraction of six publications by surgeon Paolo Macchiarini regarding the synthetic trachea transplantations that led to the death of at least three patients. 

The study could pave the way for transplanting porcine organs to humans without the risk of reigniting endogenous retroviruses.

The cell-surface receptor, SIRP-alpha, initiates the innate immune response in hosts.  

Thomas Starzl performed the first successful human liver transplant in 1967 and went on to help develop drugs that improved survival for organ transplant patients.

While the hope is to one day grow organs for transplantation into people, several technical and ethical challenges remain.

Understanding postmortem gene expression could help researchers improve organ transplants and time-of-death estimates, according to studies on mice and zebrafish.