To Save Lives, This Scientist Is Trying to Grow Human Organs Inside of Sheep

A lamb receiving a shot from medical personnel.
More than 114,000 men, women, and children are awaiting organ transplants in the United States. Each day, 22 of them die waiting. To address this shortage, researchers are working hard to grow organs on-demand, using the patient's own cells, to eliminate the need to find a perfectly matched donor.
"The next step is to transplant these cells into a larger animal that will produce an organ that is the right size for a human."
But creating full-size replacement organs in a lab is still decades away. So some scientists are experimenting with the boundaries of nature and life itself: using other mammals to grow human cells. Earlier this year, this line of investigation took a big step forward when scientists announced they had grown sheep embryos that contained human cells.
Dr. Pablo Ross, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, along with a team of colleagues, introduced human stem cells into the sheep embryos at a very early stage of their development and found that one in every 10,000 cells in the embryo were human. It was an improvement over their prior experiment, using a pig embryo, when they found that one in every 100,000 cells in the pig were human. The resulting chimera, as the embryo is called, is only allowed to develop for 28 days. Leapsmag contributor Caren Chesler recently spoke with Ross about his research. Their interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Your goal is to one day grow human organs in animals, for organ transplantation. What does your research entail?
We're transplanting stem cells from a person into an animal embryo, at about day three to five of embryo development.
This concept has already been shown to work between mice and rats. You can grow a mouse pancreas inside a rat, or you can grow a rat pancreas inside a mouse.
For this approach to work for humans, the next step is to transplant these cells into a larger animal that will produce an organ that is the right size for a human. That's why we chose to start some of this preliminary work using pigs and sheep. Adult pigs and adult sheep have organs that are of similar size to an adult human. Pigs and sheep also grow really fast, so they can grow from a single cell at the time of fertilization to human adult size -- about 200 pounds -- in only nine to 10 months. That's better than the average waiting time for an organ transplant.
"You don't want the cells to confer any human characteristics in the animal....Too many cells, that may be a problem, because we do not know what that threshold is."
So how do you get the animal to grow the human organ you want?
First, we need to generate the animal without its own organ. We can generate sheep or pigs that will not grow their own pancreases. Those animals can then be used as hosts for human pancreas generation.
For the approach to work, we need the human stem cells to be able to integrate into the embryo and to contribute to its tissues. What we've been doing with pigs, and more recently, in sheep, is testing different types of stem cells, and introducing them into an early embryo between three to five days of development. We then transfer that embryo to a surrogate female and then harvest the embryos back at day 28 of development, at which point most of the organs are pre-formed.
The human cells will contribute to every organ. But in trying to do that, they will compete with the host organism. Since this is happening inside a pig embryo, which is inside a pig foster mother, the pig cells will win that competition for every organ.
Because you're not putting in enough human cells?
No, because it's a pig environment. Everything is pig. The host, basically, is in control. That's what we see when we do rat mice, or mouse rat: the host always wins the battle.
But we need human cells in the early development -- a few, but not too few -- so that when an organ needs to form, like a pancreas (which develops at around day 25), the pig cells will not respond to that, but if there are human cells in that location, [those human cells] can respond to pancreas formation.
From the work in mice and rats, we know we need some kind of global contribution across multiple tissues -- even a 1% contribution will be sufficient. But if the cells are not there, then they're not going to contribute to that organ. The way we target the specific organ is by removing the competition for that organ.
So if you want it to grow a pancreas, you use an embryo that is not going to grow a pancreas of its own. But you can't control where the other cells go. For instance, you don't want them going to the animal's brain – or its gonads –right?
You don't want the cells to confer any human characteristics in the animal. But even if cells go to the brain, it's not going to confer on the animal human characteristics. A few human cells, even if they're in the brain, won't make it a human brain. Too many cells, that may be a problem, because we do not know what that threshold is.
The objective of our research right now is to look at just 28 days of embryonic development and evaluate what's going on: Are the human cells there? How many? Do they go to the brain? If so, how many? Is this a problem, or is it not a problem? If we find that too many human cells go to the brain, that will probably mean that we wouldn't continue with this approach. At this point, we're not controlling it; we're analyzing it.
"By keeping our research in a very early stage of development, we're not creating a human or a humanoid or anything in between."
What other ethical concerns have arisen?
Conferring human properties to the organism, that is a major concern. I wouldn't like to be involved in that, and so that's what we're trying to assess. By keeping our research in a very early stage of development, we're not creating a human or a humanoid or anything in between.
What specifically sets off the ethical alarms? An animal developing human traits?
Animals developing human characteristics goes beyond what would be considered acceptable. I share that concern. But so far, what we have observed, primarily in rats and mice, is that the host animal dictates development. When you put mouse cells into a rat -- and they're so closely related, sometimes the mouse cells contribute to about 30 percent of the cells in the animal -- the outcome is still a rat. It's the size of a rat. It's the shape of the rat. It has the organ sizes of a rat. Even when the pancreas is fully made out of mouse cells, the pancreas is rat-sized because it grew inside the rat.
This happens even with an organ that is not shared, like a gallbladder, which mice have but rats do not. If you put cells from a mouse into a rat, it never grows a gallbladder. And if you put rat cells into the mouse, the rat cells can end up in the gallbladder even though those rat cells would never have made a gallbladder in a rat.
That means the cell structure is following the directions of the embryo, in terms of how they're going to form and what they're going to make. Based on those observations, if you put human cells into a sheep, we are going to get a sheep with human cells. The organs, the pancreas, in our case, will be the size and shape of the sheep pancreas, but it will be loaded with human cells identical to those of the patient that provided the cells used to generate the stem cells.
But, yeah, if by doing this, the animal acquires the functional or anatomical characteristics associated with a human, it would not be acceptable for me.
So you think these concerns are justified?
Absolutely. They need to be considered. But sometimes by raising these concerns, we prevent technologies from being developed. We need to consider the concerns, but we must evaluate them fully, to determine if they are scientifically justified. Because while we must consider the ethics of doing this, we also need to consider the ethics of not doing it. Every day, 22 people in the US die because they don't receive the organ they need to survive. This shortage is not going to be solved by donations, alone. That's clear. And when people die of old age, their organs are not good anymore.
Since organ transplantation has been so successful, the number of people needing organs has just been growing. The number of organs available has also grown but at a much slower pace. We need to find an alternative, and I think growing the organs in animals is one of those alternatives.
Right now, there's a moratorium on National Institutes of Health funding?
Yes. It's only one agency, but it happens to be the largest biomedical funding source. We have public funding for this work from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and one of my colleagues has funding from the Department of Defense.
"I can say, without NIH funding, it's not going to happen here. It may happen in other places, like China."
Can we put the moratorium in context? How much research in the U.S. is funded by the NIH?
Probably more than 75 percent.
So what kind of impact would lifting that ban have on speeding up possible treatments for those who need a new organ?
Oh, I think it would have a huge impact. The moratorium not only prevents people from seeking funding to advance this area of research, it influences other sources of funding, who think, well, if the NIH isn't doing it, why are we going to do it? It hinders progress.
So with the ban, how long until we can really have organs growing in animals? I've heard five or 10 years.
With or without the ban, I don't think I can give you an accurate estimate.
What we know so far is that human cells don't contribute a lot to the animal embryo. We don't know exactly why. We have a lot of good ideas about things we can test, but we can't move forward right now because we don't have funding -- or we're moving forward but very slowly. We're really just scratching the surface in terms of developing these technologies.
We still need that one major leap in our understanding of how different species interact, and how human cells participate in the development of other species. I cannot predict when we're going to reach that point. I can say, without NIH funding, it's not going to happen here. It may happen in other places, like China, but without NIH funding, it's not going to happen in the U.S.
I think it's important to mention that this is in a very early stage of development and it should not be presented to people who need an organ as something that is possible right now. It's not fair to give false hope to people who are desperate.
So the five to 10 year figure is not realistic.
I think it will take longer than that. If we had a drug right now that we knew could stop heart attacks, it could take five to 10 years just to get it to market. With this, you're talking about a much more complex system. I would say 20 to 25 years. Maybe.
The Friday Five: A surprising health benefit for people who have kids
In this week's Friday Five, your kids may be stressing you out, but research suggests they're actually protecting a key aspect of your health. Plus, a new device unlocks the heart's secrets, super-ager gene transplants and more.
The Friday Five covers five stories in research that you may have missed this week. There are plenty of controversies and troubling ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but this news roundup focuses on scientific creativity and progress to give you a therapeutic dose of inspiration headed into the weekend.
Listen on Apple | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Stitcher | Listen on Amazon | Listen on Google
Here are the promising studies covered in this week's Friday Five:
- Kids stressing you out? They could be protecting your health.
- A new device unlocks the heart's secrets
- Super-ager gene transplants
- Surgeons could 3D print your organs before operations
- A skull cap looks into the brain like an fMRI
Matt Fuchs is the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org and Making Sense of Science. He is also a contributing reporter to the Washington Post and has written for the New York Times, Time Magazine, WIRED and the Washington Post Magazine, among other outlets. Follow him @fuchswriter.
Can tech help prevent the insect apocalypse?
Declining numbers of insects, coupled with climate change, can have devastating effects for people in more ways than one. But clever use of technologies like AI could keep them buzzing.
This article originally appeared in One Health/One Planet, a single-issue magazine that explores how climate change and other environmental shifts are making us more vulnerable to infectious diseases by land and by sea - and how scientists are working on solutions.
On a warm summer day, forests, meadows, and riverbanks should be abuzz with insects—from butterflies to beetles and bees. But bugs aren’t as abundant as they used to be, and that’s not a plus for people and the planet, scientists say. The declining numbers of insects, coupled with climate change, can have devastating effects for people in more ways than one. “Insects have been around for a very long time and can live well without humans, but humans cannot live without insects and the many services they provide to us,” says Philipp Lehmann, a researcher in the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University in Sweden. Their decline is not just bad, Lehmann adds. “It’s devastating news for humans.
”Insects and other invertebrates are the most diverse organisms on the planet. They fill most niches in terrestrial and aquatic environments and drive ecosystem functions. Many insects are also economically vital because they pollinate crops that humans depend on for food, including cereals, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. A paper published in PNAS notes that insects alone are worth more than $70 billion a year to the U.S. economy. In places where pollinators like honeybees are in decline, farmers now buy them from rearing facilities at steep prices rather than relying on “Mother Nature.”
And because many insects serve as food for other species—bats, birds and freshwater fish—they’re an integral part of the ecosystem’s food chain. “If you like to eat good food, you should thank an insect,” says Scott Hoffman Black, an ecologist and executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Oregon. “And if you like birds in your trees and fish in your streams, you should be concerned with insect conservation.”
Deforestation, urbanization, and agricultural spread have eaten away at large swaths of insect habitat. The increasingly poorly controlled use of insecticides, which harms unintended species, and the proliferation of invasive insect species that disrupt native ecosystems compound the problem.
“There is not a single reason why insects are in decline,” says Jessica L. Ware, associate curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and president of the Entomological Society of America. “There are over one million described insect species, occupying different niches and responding to environmental stressors in different ways.”
Jessica Ware, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, is using DNA methods to monitor insects.
Credit:D.Finnin/AMNH
In addition to habitat loss fueling the decline in insect populations, the other “major drivers” Ware identified are invasive species, climate change, pollution, and fluctuating levels of nitrogen, which play a major role in the lifecycle of plants, some of which serve as insect habitants and others as their food. “The causes of world insect population declines are, unfortunately, very easy to link to human activities,” Lehmann says.
Climate change will undoubtedly make the problem worse. “As temperatures start to rise, it can essentially make it too hot for some insects to survive,” says Emily McDermott, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at the University of Arkansas. “Conversely in other areas, it could potentially also allow other insects to expand their ranges.”
Without Pollinators Humans Will Starve
We may not think much of our planet’s getting warmer by only one degree Celsius, but it can spell catastrophe for many insects, plants, and animals, because it’s often accompanied by less rainfall. “Changes in precipitation patterns will have cascading consequences across the tree of life,” says David Wagner, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut. Insects, in particular, are “very vulnerable” because “they’re small and susceptible to drying.”
For instance, droughts have put the monarch butterfly at risk of being unable to find nectar to “recharge its engine” as it migrates from Canada and New England to Mexico for winter, where it enters a hibernation state until it journeys back in the spring. “The monarch is an iconic and a much-loved insect,” whose migration “is imperiled by climate change,” Wagner says.
Warming and drying trends in the Western United States are perhaps having an even more severe impact on insects than in the eastern region. As a result, “we are seeing fewer individual butterflies per year,” says Matt Forister, a professor of insect ecology at the University of Nevada, Reno.
There are hundreds of butterfly species in the United States and thousands in the world. They are pollinators and can serve as good indicators of other species’ health. “Although butterflies are only one group among many important pollinators, in general we assume that what’s bad for butterflies is probably bad for other insects,” says Forister, whose research focuses on butterflies. Climate change and habitat destruction are wreaking havoc on butterflies as well as plants, leading to a further indirect effect on caterpillars and butterflies.
Different insect species have different levels of sensitivity to environmental changes. For example, one-half of the bumblebee species in the United States are showing declines, whereas the other half are not, says Christina Grozinger, a professor of entomology at the Pennsylvania State University. Some species of bumble bees are even increasing in their range, seemingly resilient to environmental changes. But other pollinators are dwindling to the point that farmers have to buy from the rearing facilities, which is the case for the California almond industry. “This is a massive cost to the farmer, which could be provided for free, in case the local habitats supported these pollinators,” Lehmann says.
For bees and other insects, climate change can harm the plants they depend on for survival or have a negative impact on the insects directly. Overly rainy and hot conditions may limit flowering in plants or reduce the ability of a pollinator to forage and feed, which then decreases their reproductive success, resulting in dwindling populations, Grozinger explains.
“Nutritional deprivation can also make pollinators more sensitive to viruses and parasites and therefore cause disease spread,” she says. “There are many ways that climate change can reduce our pollinator populations and make it more difficult to grow the many fruit, vegetable and nut crops that depend on pollinators.”
Disease-Causing Insects Can Bring More Outbreaks
While some much-needed insects are declining, certain disease-causing species may be spreading and proliferating, which is another reason for human concern. Many mosquito types spread malaria, Zika virus, West Nile virus, and a brain infection called equine encephalitis, along with other diseases as well as heartworms in dogs, says Michael Sabourin, president of the Vermont Entomological Society. An animal health specialist for the state, Sabourin conducts vector surveys that identify ticks and mosquitoes.
Scientists refer to disease-carrying insects as vector species and, while there’s a limited number of them, many of these infections can be deadly. Fleas were a well-known vector for the bubonic plague, while kissing bugs are a vector for Chagas disease, a potentially life-threatening parasitic illness in humans, dogs, and other mammals, Sabourin says.
As the planet heats up, some of the creepy crawlers are able to survive milder winters or move up north. Warmer temperatures and a shorter snow season have spawned an increasing abundance of ticks in Maine, including the blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis), known to transmit Lyme disease, says Sean Birkel, an assistant professor in the Climate Change Institute and Cooperative Extension at the University of Maine.
Coupled with more frequent and heavier precipitation, rising temperatures bring a longer warm season that can also lead to a longer period of mosquito activity. “While other factors may be at play, climate change affects important underlying conditions that can, in turn, facilitate the spread of vector-borne disease,” Birkel says.
For example, if mosquitoes are finding fewer of their preferred food sources, they may bite humans more. Both male and female mosquitoes feed on sugar as part of their normal behavior, but if they aren’t eating their fill, they may become more bloodthirsty. One recent paper found that sugar-deprived Anopheles gambiae females go for larger blood meals to stay in good health and lay eggs. “More blood meals equals more chances to pick up and transmit a pathogen,” McDermott says, He adds that climate change could reduce the number of available plants to feed on. And while most mosquitoes are “generalist sugar-feeders” meaning that they will likely find alternatives, losing their favorite plants can make them hungrier for blood
Similar to the effect of losing plants, mosquitoes may get turned onto people if they lose their favorite animal species. For example, some studies found that Culex pipiens mosquitoes that transmit the West Nile virus feed primarily on birds in summer. But that changes in the fall, at least in some places. Because there are fewer birds around, C. pipiens switch to mammals, including humans. And if some disease-carrying insect species proliferate or increase their ranges, that increases chances for human infection, says McDermott. “A larger concern is that climate change could increase vector population sizes, making it more likely that people or animals would be bitten by an infected insect.”
Science Can Help Bring Back the Buzz
To help friendly insects thrive and keep the foes in check, scientists need better ways of trapping, counting, and monitoring insects. It’s not an easy job, but artificial intelligence and molecular methods can help. Ware’s lab uses various environmental DNA methods to monitor freshwater habitats. Molecular technologies hold much promise. The so-called DNA barcodes, in which species are identified using a short string of their genes, can now be used to identify birds, bees, moths and other creatures, and should be used on a larger scale, says Wagner, the University of Connecticut professor. “One day, something akin to Star Trek’s tricorder will soon be on sale down at the local science store.”
Scientists are also deploying artificial intelligence, or AI, to identify insects in agricultural systems and north latitudes where there are fewer bugs, Wagner says. For instance, some automated traps already use the wingbeat frequencies of mosquitoes to distinguish the harmless ones from the disease-carriers. But new technology and software are needed to further expand detection based on vision, sound, and odors.
“Because of their ubiquity, enormity of numbers, and seemingly boundless diversity, we desperately need to develop molecular and AI technologies that will allow us to automate sampling and identification,” says Wagner. “That would accelerate our ability to track insect populations, alert us to the presence of new disease vectors, exotic pest introductions, and unexpected declines.”