An important breakthrough in genetic engineering was made in 2017, when researchers at the Salk Institute in California succeeded in creating a hybrid human-pig embryo by implanting human cells into a porcine embryo and growing it up to four weeks of age . Now the news also comes from the United States of a second human-animal hybrid embryo, this time a sheep . The authorship of the finding corresponds to a team of scientists from Stanford University (California), who have created the first cross between these two different species by introducing human stem cells into sheep embryos . The human part of these embryos constitutes less than 1% of their cells but, as explained by biologist Hiro Nakauchi, “it is a very important first step”. This research has been based on previous tests carried out by the same team, who have already managed to grow human cells within pig embryos as we explained at the beginning.
According to the responsible researchers, these studies, along with other experimental genetic engineering work, such as the manufacture of organoids, could be the solution for the thousands of people who are on waiting lists to receive donations of organs for transplants , many of them which die before obtaining a compatible donor. Spain is the world’s leading transplant country but even in its situation, better than the rest of the world, almost 5% of patients who wait for a liver or a heart, die before receiving it.
The organs produced from these hybrid embryos would be compatible if at least 1% of the cells were human, which means that at the moment they cannot be used. Beyond the ethical debate that genetic engineering always raises, there is no doubt that the future will go through this type of research, since only in the United States every 10 minutes a new patient becomes part of a transplant waiting list.
