Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada has spent the last seven years and £5 million in perfecting a technique by which a sheep can be created with 15% human cells.
The technique involves a process in which adult human cells are injected into a sheep’s foetus.
The result is a breed of sheep which have 15% human cells and 85% animal cells and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans.
The scientist has already created a sheep liver which has a large portion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep organ to a human one so that it can be transplanted in patients.
This process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injecting them into a peritoneum of a sheep’s foetus.
When a lamb is born, two months later it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that can successfully be transplanted into humans.
Prof Zanjani stated that:
“We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient. We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don’t just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails.”
This research will one day help people who are in need of an organ transplant. At present there are 7,168 patients who are waiting for an organ in Britain alone two-third of them are expected to die before an organ can be made available for them.”
The development is likely to revive more criticism about the scientists playing God and there is also a possibility of viruses that are silent in animals and can be introduced into humans.
Via: mailonsunday
