xenotransplantation
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The human immune system is the body's main defense against infectious organisms. In this capacity it works like a well-drilled army. Penetrate one line of defense, and a flanking maneuver from a second line quickly moves in. Although the immune system is essential for life, when a person needs an organ transplant, the immune system suddenly becomes a deadly force, attacking and destroying the implant. Immune system suppressing drugs such as cyclosporin have made human organ transplantation possible by restricting attack on the transplanted organ while sparing the immune system's most life-saving benefits. But the challenges facing researchers, who are trying to adapt animal organs for transplantation into humans, a process called xenotransplantation, are much steeper. Duke University scientists are systematically evading the immune system's defenses to make xenotransplantation a practical option for the almost 4,000 people who die each year waiting for human organs.
The prospect of using animal organs to save people is a goal Duke immunologist Jeffrey Platt believes is worth pursuing. He is looking to pigs, an animal that supplies humans with food and leather, for that ready organ supply. Surgeons already use pig heart valves to replace human heart valves that wear out...