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First Human-Pig Hybrid Created: Named ‘Chimera’

27 January 2017

By Lois

Scientists have created the first ‘chimera’ (named after the cross-species beast of Greek mythology), a pig-human hybrid which has been hailed as a significant first step towards the growth of human organs like hearts or livers from scratch. The success marks the first time two large distantly-related species have been used to create an embryo.

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who led the work on the study in a Biological institute in California, said: “The ultimate goal is to grow functional and transplantable tissue or organs, but we are far away from that. This is an important first step.”

The study has inevitably stirred up ethical concerns due to its controversial nature and these risk eclipsing the scientific achievement. Fears have arisen over highly intelligent hybrid creatures being created which could then accidentally be released into the wild. The US National Institute health placed a moratorium on the research last year while the potential risks were assessed, and Izpisua Belmonte did acknowledge that “the idea of having an animal being born composing of human cells creates some feelings that need to be addressed,” however he also said that many fears stem from mythology and would not appear in meticulously controlled experiments.

The progression of this kind of science comes at an important time, since numbers of organ donators are startlingly low, and patients are suffering as a result. Developments in this area could be extremely efficacious for progressive medicine, although ethical worries are ongoing. “This is a significant advance that raises opportunities and ethical questions as well,” said Professor Daniel Garry, cardiologist and head of a different chimera project at the University of Minnesota.

“This is long enough for us to try to understand how the human and pig cells mix together early on without raising ethical concerns about mature chimeric animals,” said Izpisua Belmonte. The team believe the research could lead to incubating human organs, genetically matched to a patient, for use in transplants or for testing new medicines more safely and effectively.

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