It is proposed that human organs and tissues for transplantation be grown in animals.

With the development of surgery and medical technology, it has become possible to transplant organs and tissues from person to person. Of course, when it comes to transplantation, the patient in most cases has to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of his life. But this is much better than dying due to sudden cardiac arrest or liver failure, right? Unfortunately, there are a lot of patients who need a transplant, and there are very few donors. Patients have to wait many months for their turn, and sometimes a person simply does not wait - he dies.

To prevent this from happening, some scientists propose to grow organs for humans in animals. For example, in pigs or sheep. How to do it? Of course, this is not a simple technology, but all this is quite real.

To obtain an organ with tissues of one species of organisms in another organism, the following method is used. In the embryo, the gene that is responsible for the development of any organ is turned off. Then the stem cells of a healthy animal or a representative of a different species are transplanted into the embryo. In this case, the organ develops in a "surrogate embryo." According to scientists, the problem is to grow a human liver inside a pig or sheep, no.

In order for all this to work out, the embryo must be very early, its age should be no more than a few days. And this factor, the small age of the embryo, causes concern among some scientists (and not only scientists). So, opponents of this method of growing organs are afraid that something else may develop from the donor embryo, and not a sheep or a pig. And although scientists have conducted experiments to refute this claim, some concerns remain.



However, experiments are already underway . So, according to experts, last year in the United States raised about 20 embryos of pigs and sheep with human cells. Plus several more such experiments were conducted outside the country.

Japanese scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi (Hiromitsu Nakauchi) was able to conduct an experiment in the United States to grow human tissue in the organisms of sheep and pigs. Moreover, the number of human cells in such an experiment was intentionally small. Previously, the same scientist was able to grow a mouse with a rat pancreas. Now, according to the scientist, such experiments are not necessary to obtain real organs, but to obtain evidence of the viability of such a practice.

If everything goes well, then you can start growing "chimeras", that is, animals with human organs. Plus, various ethical commissions should evaluate the result.

The advantage of this method is that organs for the patient can be grown within a year. Plus, the patient receives an organ grown from his own tissues, so there will be no rejection.