a sizzling(极热的) 2 discovery by chinese scientists may one day allow pig tissue to be transplanted successfully into humans. their research presented in the journal of leukocyte biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) represents a major step forward toward filling the shortage of vital organs for human transplantation. at the core of their work, they showed that altering or overexpressing the human programmed death ligand-1 (pd-l1) 3 in the endothelial cells(内皮细胞) of pig 4 reduces the conditions that lead to 5. this strongly suggests that humans could receive altered porcine(猪的) organs with fewer complications. "6 engineered pigs may someday overcome the severe 7 organ shortage, and save human lives," said qing ding, ph.d., co-study author from the shanghai institute of immunology at the shanghai jiaotong university school of medicine in shanghai, china.
to make the discovery, scientists conducted experiments using two groups of pig 8(血管的) endothelial cells. the first group was genetically engineered to express human pd-l1, while the second group was normal. when both sets of cells were exposed to human lymphocytes(淋巴球) , lower rejection response occurred in the group with the altered 1, while higher rejection responses were seen in the normal cells. study results suggest that human pd-l1 could be used as a novel 9 agent to enhance 10 of xenotransplants(异种器官移植) and also supports the possibility of using human pd-l1 transgenic pigs as xenotransplant 11. using this type of genetic engineering technique could potentially overcome current challenges related to successful pig/human transplant rejection.
"xenotransplantation has the potential to fill a huge gap between the number of available human donor tissue and number of 12 recipients," said john wherry, ph.d., deputy editor of the journal of leukocyte biology, "but our understanding of the pathways that might enhance the acceptance and 13 function of organs from animals such as pigs 14 incomplete. the study by dr. ding and his colleagues is a very substantial step forward in defining a key immunoregulatory pathway that could be targeted in this setting."