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.
Patients voice hope and relief as FDA gives third-ever drug approval for ALS
On Sept. 29, the FDA approved Relyvrio, a new drug for ALS, even though a study of 137 ALS patients did not result in “substantial evidence” that Relyvrio was effective.
At age 52, Glen Rouse suffered from arm weakness and a lot of muscle twitches. “I first thought something was wrong when I could not throw a 50-pound bag of dog food over the tailgate of my truck—something I use to do effortlessly,” said the 54-year-old resident of Anderson, California, about three hours north of San Francisco.
In August, Rouse retired as a forester for a private timber company, a job he had held for 31 years. The impetus: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive neuromuscular disease that is commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after the New York Yankees’ first baseman who succumbed to it less than a month shy of his 38th birthday in 1941. ALS eventually robs an individual of the ability to talk, walk, chew, swallow and breathe.
Rouse is now dependent on ventilation through a nasal mask and uses a powerchair to get around. “I can no longer walk or use my arms very well,” he said. “I can still move my wrists and fingers. I can also transfer from my chair to the toilet if I have two of my friends help me.”
It’s “shocking” that modern medicine has very little to offer to people with this devastating condition, Rouse said. But there is hope on the horizon. Yesterday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Relyvrio, a drug made up of two parts, sodium phenylbutyrate and taurursodiol, to treat patients with ALS.
“This approval provides another important treatment option for ALS, a life-threatening disease that currently has no cure,” said Billy Dunn, director of the Office of Neuroscience in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement. “The FDA remains committed to facilitating the development of additional ALS treatments.”
Until this point, the FDA had approved only two other medications—Riluzole (rilutek) in 1995 and Radicava (edaravone) in 2017—to extend life in patients with ALS, which typically kills within two to five years after diagnosis. That’s why earlier this week, Rouse was optimistic about the FDA’s likely approval of a controversial new drug for ALS.
When Relyvrio is taken in addition to Riluzole, it appears to slow functional decline by an additional 25 percent and extend life by another 6 to 10 months, said Richard Bedlak, director of the Duke ALS Clinic. “It is not a cure, but it is definitely a step forward.”
“The whole ALS community is extremely excited about it,” he said the day before Relyvrio’s expected approval. “We are very hopeful. We’re on pins and needles.”
A study of 137 ALS patients did not result in “substantial evidence” that Relyvrio was effective, the agency’s Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee concluded in March. However, after some persuasion from FDA officials, patients and their families, the committee met again and decided to recommend approving the drug.
In January 2019, following an ALS diagnosis at age 58 in October the previous year, Jeff Sarnacki, of Chester, Maryland, was accepted into a trial for Relyvrio. “Because of the trial, we did experience hope and a greater sense of help than had we not had that opportunity,” said Juliet Taylor, his wife and caregiver. They both believed the drug “worked for him in giving him more time.”
In June 2019, Sarnacki chose an open-label extension, offered to patients by drug researchers after a study ends, and took the active drug until he died peacefully at home under hospice care in May 2020, five days after his 60th birthday. A retired agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who later worked as a security consultant, Sarnacki lived about 19 months after diagnosis, which is shorter than the typical prognosis.
His symptoms began with leg cramps in fall 2017 and foot drop in early 2018. A feeding tube was placed in 2019, as it became necessary early in his illness, Taylor said. He also took Radicava and Riluzole, the two previously approved drugs, for his ALS. “We were both incredulous that, so many years after Lou Gehrig’s own diagnosis, there were so few treatments available,” she said.
The dearth of successful treatments for ALS is “certainly not for lack of trying,” said Karen Raley Steffens, a registered nurse and ALS support services coordinator at the Les Turner ALS Foundation in Skokie, Ill. “There are thousands of researchers and scientists all over the world working tirelessly to try to develop treatments for ALS.”
Unfortunately, she added, research takes time and exorbitant amounts of funding, while bureaucratic challenges persist. The rare disease also manifests and progresses in many different ways, so many treatments are needed.
As of 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that more than 31,000 people in the U.S. live with ALS, and an average of 5,000 people are newly diagnosed every year. It is slightly more common in men than women. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 55 and 75.
Most cases of ALS are sporadic, meaning that doctors don’t know the cause. There is about a one-year interval between symptom onset and an ALS diagnosis for most patients, so many motor neurons are lost by the time individuals can enroll in a clinical trial, said Richard Bedlack, professor of neurology and director of the Duke ALS Clinic in Durham, North Carolina.
Bedlack found the new drug, Relyvrio, to be “very promising,” which is why he testified to the FDA in favor of approval. (He’s a consultant and disease state speaker for multiple companies including Amylyx, manufacturer of Relyvrio.)
The “drug has different mechanisms of action than the currently approved treatments,” Bedlack said. He added that, when Relyvrio is taken in addition to Riluzole, it appears to slow functional decline by an additional 25 percent and extend life by another 6 to 10 months. “It is not a cure, but it is definitely a step forward.”
T. Scott Diesing, a neurohospitalist and director of general neurology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, said he hopes the drug is “as good as people anticipated it should be, because there are not too many options for these patients.”
"FDA went out on a limb in approving Relyvrio based on limited results from a small trial while a larger study remains in progress," said Florian P. Thomas, co-director of the ALS Center at Hackensack University Medical Center and the Meridian School of Medicine. "While it is definitely promising, clearly, the last word on this drug has not been spoken."
So far, Rouse's voice is holding up, but he knows the day will come when ALS will steal that and much more from him.
ALS is 100 percent fatal, with some patients dying as soon as a year after diagnosis. A few have lasted as long as 15 years, but those are the exceptions, Diesing said.
“If this drug can provide even months of additional life, or would maintain quality of life, that’s a big deal,” he noted, adding that “the patients are saying, ‘I know it’s not proven conclusively, but what do we have to lose?’ So, they would like to try it while additional studies are ongoing.” The drug has already been conditionally approved in Canada.
As his disease progresses, Rouse hopes to get a speech-to-text voice-generating computer that he can control with his eyes. So far, his voice is holding up, but he knows the day will come when ALS will steal that and much more from him. He works at I AM ALS, a patient-led community, and six of his friends have already died of the disease.
“Every time I lose a friend to ALS, I grieve and am sad but I resolve myself to keep working harder for them, myself and others,” Rouse said. “People living with ALS find great purpose in life advocating and trying to make a difference.”
Friday Five Podcast: New drug may slow the rate of Alzheimer's disease
On September 27, pharmaceuticals Biogen and Eisai announced that their drug, lecanemab, can slow the rate of Alzheimer's disease, according to a clinical trial. Today's Friday Five episode covers this story and other health research over the month of September.
The Friday Five covers important stories in health and science research that you may have missed - usually over the previous week, but today's episode is a lookback on important studies over the month of September.
Most recently, on September 27, pharmaceuticals Biogen and Eisai announced that a clinical trial showed their drug, lecanemab, can slow the rate of Alzheimer's disease. 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 and the new month.
Listen on Apple | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Stitcher | Listen on Amazon | Listen on Google
This Friday Five episode covers the following studies published and announced over the past month:
- A new drug is shown to slow the rate of Alzheimer's disease
- The need for speed if you want to reduce your risk of dementia
- How to refreeze the north and south poles
- Ancient wisdom about Neti pots could pay off for Covid
- Two women, one man and a baby
Matt Fuchs is the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. 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 on Twitter @fuchswriter.