transplants

Two brain-dead individuals received genetically modified pig-heart transplants, part of growing efforts by scientists who want to improve tests on pig organs for pig viruses and gather data that could help launch clinical trials of animal-to-human organ transplants.Scientists at NYU Langone Health, where the research studies took place in June and July, said the pig hearts were flown from a facility hundreds of miles away and then transplanted into two recently deceased individuals, Lawrence Kelly, 72, a former welder…

Fecal transplants continue to make headlines in recent years, showing promise in everything from COVID-19 treatments to anti-aging experiments in animals, but we're still only scratching the surface, scientists say.  In human patients, the technique – in which fecal microbiota are transferred from a healthy individual to another person – is usually used to treat conditions like Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but experts think the method could potentially be used to combat a…

Organ transplants can quite literally save lives, but they also come with strings attached – often including a lifetime of immunosuppression drug treatments required to keep the immune system in check, lest it reject the transplanted organ as a foreign invader.  Now scientists are reporting on three successful kidney organ transplants, carried out in children in California, without the need for immune suppression. The transplants used a new method that minimizes the risk of the new kidney getting rejected.This means…

In 2015, scientists in Switzerland began work on what they hoped would become a revolutionary machine for organ transplants, feeding livers oxygen and nutrients to keep them alive outside the body for extended periods of time. In a world-first, this pioneering perfusion machine has now facilitated the implant of a human organ after three days in storage, with the recipient in a healthy state one year after the procedure.The perfusion machine was developed as an alternative solution to current clinical practice for liver…

In an experiment on mice, transplanting fecal microbiota from young into old reversed hallmarks of aging in the gut, eyes, and brainIn the quest for eternal youth, poo transplants may seem like an unlikely way to reverse the aging process.However, scientists at the Quadram Institute and the University of East Anglia have provided evidence, from research in mice, that transplanting fecal microbiota from young into old mice can reverse the hallmarks of aging in the gut, eyes, and brain.In the reverse experiment, microbes…

One of the ways scientists hope to lighten the burden of living with type 1 diabetes is through transplantations of cells that produce insulin, shoring up supplies of the vital hormone and safely regulating blood-sugar levels into the future. Rejection of these cells by the host's immune system is a serious stumbling block for this still-experimental therapy, but new bead-like materials offer new hope by neutralizing these attacks and negating the need for long-term immunosuppressant drugs that have severe side…

The connection between gut bacteria and human health continues to be illuminated in all kinds of ways, and among the more fascinating is the way these microbes might influence different aspects of the aging process. A study has not only highlighted new facets of this relationship, but demonstrated how hallmarks of aging in the brain, gut and eyes might even be reversed through fecal transplants. The makeup of the microbial communities in our gut is being shown to shape many different aspects of our wellbeing, and we're…