It is very likely that soon the pigs can successfully migrate from our kitchen table, to the surgical table - this task has been being fought by leading scientists of the whole world for more than one year. In the UK today in the waiting list for the receipt of donor organs is 8 thousand. human. Three of them die every day.

In less developed countries, the situation is much worse. For a long time, all experiments with the transplantation of animal tissues to humans ended in complete failure, since in most cases there was a rejection. The human immune system begins to attack the transplanted organs, perceiving them as a threat, as a result of which, as a rule, they have to be removed in order to avoid complications.

However, scientists are convinced that in recent times medicine has slowly, but surely begun to pave its way to solve problems related to tissue rejection. Already, on an experimental level, operations on transplanting a heart valve from a pig controlling the flow of blood to the heart. This was achieved through the use of the latest achievements in genetic engineering. The fact is that our immune cells attack not the transplanted tissue itself, but the protein contained in it - galactosyltransferase. Get rid of it by scientists and helped genetics - they changed the genome and removed from there the function of producing this protein. This is in fact only the first step towards realizing the old dream of the medical profession - the ability to massively transplant animal tissue to humans. However, its importance should not be overestimated. The probability of rejection is still preserved, but now, according to scientists, "it is possible to more clearly identify the remaining factors that contribute to this phenomenon".

Of course, having established them, scientists with a high degree of probability will be able to get rid of them.

Now available is a transplantation of a small amount of tissue, which so far allows to achieve positive results in the treatment of type 1 diabetes, certain heart problems and a number of other diseases. In the future, scientists do not rule out the possibility that almost every organ can be transplanted from an animal - even brain cells. This, in particular, will successfully combat such diseases as Parkinson's disease.

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