(Newswire.net — January 29, 2017) —Scientists from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California have managed to produce the first human tissue inside a pig. The achievement took four years, and scientists processed 1,500 pig embryos and the stem cells from 40 people.
Lead investigator, Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, from the Salk Institute’s Gene Expression Laboratory, said the goal is to grow functional and transplantable tissue or organs.
He added that they are still far away from this goal, but this is an important first step, with the next challenge ahead to guide the human cells into forming a particular organ in pigs.
A member of Salk Institute’s team explains that these pigs, called “human pigs”, behave and look the same as ordinary pigs.
The scientists first created a rat-mouse hybrid by introducing rat cells into mouse embryos to see if animals could still develop using the DNA of another species.
The experiment was successful, and this is how the team decided to introduce human cells in pigs. This test was also successful – the human cells survived and formed a human-pig hybrid embryo which was then implanted into a sow and allowed to develop for between three and four weeks so that scientists could check they were growing normally.
The study, which is published in the journal Cell, triggered an avalanche of different comments.
Walter Low, a professor in the department of neurosurgery, University of Minnesota, told to the BBC that a pig can be an ideal incubator for human organs such as the pancreas, hearts, livers, kidneys, lungs and corneas.
However, not everyone is delighted with that idea. Some people think that scientists are creating monsters and they are concerned about the consequences of this study. What will happen if human cells start to form neurons, and potentially spark human consciousness in the animal’s brain.
Dr David King, Director of Human Genetics Alert, finds these experiments disturbing, and he said, according to the British “Telegraph”, that mythology portrayed human-animal chimeras as frightening monsters for a good reason.
“I don’t recall these scientists asking for the public’s opinion before going ahead with such experiments,” said Dr King.
Last year, the U.S. Government and The National Institutes of Health, gave permission to this controversial research but under certain conditions which are carefully monitored. The NIH imposed a moratorium on funding of these experiments in September 2016.