Home WebMail Friday, November 1, 2024, 11:22 PM | Calgary | -2.1°C | Regions Advertise Login | Our platform is in maintenance mode. Some URLs may not be available. |
Posted: 2017-08-10T18:00:21Z | Updated: 2017-08-10T23:04:55Z

A team of researchers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have hit a breakthrough in their quest to develop pigs whose organs and other tissues can be transplanted into humans.

The team, led by a biotechnology company called eGenesis , announced Thursday that it has successfully used a powerful gene-editing technique known as CRISPR to modify the DNA in pig cells and remove a number of viruses that make pig organs unsuitable for human transplant. (Read more here on how CRISPR works and its potential for humans .)

Those virus-free cells were then used to fertilize several pig embryos, which were implanted in sows who have since given birth to virus-free pigs.