China will be the first country in the world to perform a surgery where they would use modified pig organs for human transplants, provided the government approves for clinical trials, a researcher from the national xenotransplantation project has said.
China has the world's biggest pig cloning farms that have the capability to supply animals being bred specifically for transplantation of livers, hearts and other human organs. This will make China the warehouse for the whole world.
Recent experiments performed in China and other places show that various animals including monkeys have shown extended lifespan after receiving pig organ transplants.
More than 10 research institutes are involved in this national xenotransplantation project which is funded by the central government.
Earlier, Beijing used to get organs for transplants from the executed prisoners, which was a major source for decades. But this practice stopped in 2015.
World will depend on China
In the past few years, China has produced the maximum number of genetically modified pigs than any other country in the world.
Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) in Shenzen - the world's first industrial pig-cloning plant, produces at least 500 piglets every year, according to a BBC report.
Also, a researcher in the cloning facility that is run by Ministry of Agriculture said that although other such cloning farms are not as big as this one, all together they can produce nearly 1,000 cloned pigs every year.
"This is unmatched by any other country. The world will eventually depend on China for organs," said a researcher who did not wish to be named, according to SCMP.
Why the demand?
Chinese health authorities say that less than 10,000 people donated their organs from 2010 to 2016 while there are 1.5 million patients who are in need for a transplant every year.
After Beijing stopped taking organs from executed prisoners, it raised concerns on whether there will be enough donors to meet the needs of the most popular country in the world.
There are a lot of people suffering from cardiovascular diseases, lung cancer and hepatitis and are dying of organ failure, said Zhao Zijian, the director of the Metabolic Disease Research Centre at Nanjing Medical University in Jiangsu, according to South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Why pig organs?
Pig organs are most suitable for transplants to humans as they are similar to humans when it comes to size and metabolism. Multiple researches related to pig organs carried across the world have proven to be successful.
One of the success stories includes a baboon that survived for almost three years on a pig's heart at the National Institute of Health in the United States. Similar experiments with various other organs were performed in England, South Korea and Japan.
Pig cornea transplants began in 2010. Because of this, more than 1,000 patients got their eye sight restored which cost them about 30,000 yuan, according to reports.
