Pig as Best Source for Clinical Xenotransplantation

Numerous patients in each country need their life-saving transplants. The current sources required for allogenic or xeno-antigenic transplantation are mainly the organs rather than tissues and cells. As mentioned earlier, genetically edited and modified pig organs with multiple genes are attracted to solve the issues of donor organ supply and shortage. However, hurdles still include natural antibodies reactive to xenoantigens in human, and therefore, elicited antibodies are the subjects to overcome the failure in current clinical xenotransplantation. Rhesus and cynomologus monkeys are used as models in the preventive rejection of allografts, but the baboon recipient is used for pig organ xenotransplantation [1]. However, for cell xenotransplantation, cynomolgus monkey has been used [2, 3].