MGH doctors perform first-ever live-cell pig skin graft to burn patient
Burn specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital are the first in the world to successfully use live-cell, genetically engineered pig skin to temporarily close a burn wound in a human patient — but the breakthrough has drawn opposition from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Burn specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital are the first in the world to successfully use live-cell, genetically engineered pig skin to temporarily close a burn wound in a human patient — but the breakthrough has drawn opposition from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“The ultimate holy grail is the end to the world’s organ shortage, that would be the holy grail, this has come at a time when genetic editing is really hot and what we could do in years, we can do in weeks,” said Dr. Jeremy Goverman of the MGH Sumner Redstone Burn Service.
The pig tissue, known as xenoskin, was transplanted directly onto a human burn wound next to a larger piece of human skin.
Five days later, surgeons removed the human skin and the pig tissue to see that both grafts were stuck to the wound bed and were indistinguishable from each other.
Following the procedure, the burn wound was then treated further with a skin graft taken from the patient’s thigh. Healing progressed well and the patient will return to work soon.
“The goal is to replace skin with xenoskin that’s like it enough that it doesn’t get rejected,” said Goverman. “Down the line we hope to ultimately create something that’s not temporary.”
“The biggest push now is actually decreasing your donor site size and decreasing how much skin you have to harvest,” said Goverman.
Patients who receive this type of graft typically have severe burns that require more than one operation and about a week of hospitalization.
“We’ve been using dressing like this in the past, we just haven’t been able to use anything with live cells. The live cells have all the appropriate factors that could really stimulate and regenerate and close our wounds for us,” said Goverman.
MGH worked with Boston-based XenoTherapeutics, which designed the safety protocols for the special live-pig tissue graft.
Paul Holzer, CEO of XenoTherapeutics said, “We have taken a small but unprecedented step in bringing xenotransplantation from theory to therapy, one that we hope will advance this promising field of medicine and benefit patients around the world.”
Human skin grafts are subject to a national shortage and can be expensive, therefore using the pig skin can serve as a viable alternative, according to MGH.
But Alka Chandna, vice president of laboratory investigations cases at PETA, said, “It’s categorically unethical to steal organs from another sentient being who’s still using them. Pigs are individuals, not warehouses for spare parts,” said Chandna.
Chandna said, “Tinkering with the genes of these intelligent, sensitive beings to turn them into organ factories is a waste of lives, time and money — and the suffering caused is unimaginable.”
The advancement of the procedure reaches back decades to genetically modified pigs that were developed in the 1990s at MGH by Dr. David Sachs.
The modifications removed a gene specific to pigs and not present in humans, allowing the pig skin to appear less foreign to the human immune system.
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