Man who lived with a pig’s heart for 40 days dies(Read More)
Lawrence Faucette, 58, received the organ transplant at the University of Maryland’s Medical Center last month in end-stage heart failure but was deemed ineligible for a traditional human heart transplant because of an underlying medical condition.
The father-of-two and 20-year Navy veteran was healthy for the first month after the transplant from a genetically-modified pig, doctors said.
But in recent days his body began to show signs of rejecting the organ — which is also the most significant challenge with human transplants. He died on Monday.
Mr Faucette lived with a pig heart for 40 days, which was not as long as David Bennett — the first person to receive a pig heart — who lived for 60 days after the operation.
Lawrence Faucette pictured above with his wife Ann in the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine in September this year before he received a transplanted heart from a pig. He has died nearly six weeks after the transplant
In both of these historic procedures, a pig heart was gathered for a terminal heart disease patient who was ineligible for a human heart transplant. Scientists inserted six human genes into the genome of the donor pig ¿ modifications designed to make the organ more tolerable to the human immune system. They inactivated four genes, including sugar in its cells that is responsible for that hyper-fast organ rejection and a growth gene to prevent the pig’s heart, which weighs around 267g compared to the average human heart, which weighs 303g, from continuing to expand. Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center removed the patient’s heart and inserted the altered pig heart