Current State of Xenotransplantation

With advances in medical technology, even if serious organ damage occurs, it can be overcome through organ transplantation. But organ transplants basically require organ donors, and the donor organs are incredibly limited in their number when compared to the demanders. In fact, there are about 40,000 people waiting for organ transplants in Korea; however, only about 200 organ donors are registered on the official site [data available from URL: https://www.konos.go.kr/konosis (accessed September 20, 2020)]. When the organ supply and the demand were considered, there is a big gap, and it has led to the xenotransplantation idea. Using heterogeneous animals can easily solve the shortage of organs. However, organ transplants are cautious, even among the same species due to genetic differences in MHC-I and various immune responses. The barriers between xenotransplantation are much more complex than homogeneous transplantation. Therefore, in order to study the stabilization of xenotransplantation, model animals are used to specify and overcome the barriers of xenotransplantation to succeed in transplantation. Systematically, the most similar with human being is nonhuman primates (NHPs). They were first selected as a model animal of a study of xenotransplantation but was excluded for ethical issues.