Researchers Create Gene-Edited Pigs That May Be Safe For Organ Transplants In Humans.

reports that scientists have long hoped that pigs could be used to provide organs for people, but many of those efforts “were thwarted by the fear that viruses from the pigs...could infect humans through the transplants.” The researchers used CRISPR to remove the viruses from the pigs’ DNA and then cloned those pigs to produce 37 piglets, 15 of which are still alive. The Atlantic (8/7, Zhang) explains that the two major problems with transplanting organs from pigs to humans, or xenotransplants, are the human immune response to the pigs’ organs and the potential transmission of viruses from the pigs’ DNA. The article suggests that “solving these two problems has become much easier and much faster,” because scientists can use CRISPR to “knock out the pig genes that trigger the human immune response” and now “they can inactivate the viruses – called porcine endogenous retroviruses, or PERVs – that lurk in the pig genome.” http://time.com/4896026/pig-organs-humans-crispr-genome-editing/