…And Help Us Live Longer
This little piggy skipped the market and went on to save the world…well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not farfetched from the truth.
While millions of people can benefit from an organ transplant, there are not millions that can donate an organ. Faced with this conundrum, George Church, PhD, professor at Harvard and MIT, and his team looked to our four-legged, pig friends.
Twenty years ago, when it was first suggested to transplant a pig organ into a human major problems popped up — mainly the acceptance of the foreign organ and the viruses it could spread.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, Church and his team have been able to get what was once science fiction close to pre-clinical trials in non-human primates.
Not only does Church see pigs as a fix for the U.S. donor crisis, but he also sees a number of other life-saving and life-prolonging potentials. For example, manipulated pig organs have the capacity to better reduced, or even eliminate, senescence, cancer and infectious disease. They even have the promise to prevent and reverse aging.
Watch the video above to learn how Church resolved the obstacles and better understand the “super power” pigs possess.
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