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 Routine pig-human organ transplants are years away, but recent
scientific advances are breaking down barriers that frustrated prior
attempts to use pigs as a ready supply of replacement parts for sick
or injured people, making it an attractive new market.
"Our bread and butter has always been the bacon, sausage, fresh pork
- very much a food-focused operation," Courtney Stanton, vice
president of Smithfield's new bioscience unit, told Reuters in an
exclusive interview.
“We want to signal to the medical device and science communities
that this is an area we're focused on - that we're not strictly
packers," she said.
Smithfield, the $14 billion subsidiary of China’s WH Group
<0288.HK>, in its first move has joined a public-private tissue
engineering consortium funded by an $80 million grant from the U.S.
Department of Defense. Smithfield is the only pork producer, joining
health-care companies including Abbott Laboratories <ABT.N>,
Medtronic <MDT.N> and United Therapeutics Corp <UTHR.O>.
Transplants are used for people diagnosed with organ failure and who
have no other treatment options. Transplants from animals could help
close a critical gap to help those in need. The United Network for
Organ Sharing estimates that, on average, 22 people die each day
while waiting for a transplant.
Smithfield already harvests materials for medical use from the 16
million hogs it slaughters each year. The company owns more than 51
percent of its farms and hopes to sell directly to researchers and
health-care companies, which now typically buy from third parties.
Stanton said the U.S. market for pork byproducts used for medical,
pet food and non-food purposes stands at more than $100 billion, and
that excludes any potential market for animal-to-human transplants,
known as xenotransplants.
Smithfield has deals in the works to supply pig organs to two
entities, though Stanton would not disclose the names.
"It's just a huge potential space, and to be at the leading edge and
focused on building those relationships is critical,” she said.
HOG HEARTS
Pigs have long been a tantalizing source of transplants because
their organs are so similar to humans. A hog heart at the time of
slaughter, for example, is about the size of an adult human heart.
Other organs from pigs being researched for transplantation into
humans include kidney, liver and lungs.
Prior efforts at pig-to-human transplants have failed because of
genetic differences that caused organ rejection or viruses that
posed an infection risk. Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG folded its $1
billion xenotransplantation effort in 2001 because of safety
concerns about pig viruses that could be passed to humans.
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George Church, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor and
researcher, tackled that problem two years ago, using a new
gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to trim away potentially harmful
virus genes that have impeded the use of pig organs for transplants
in humans.
Church has since formed a company named eGenesis Bio to develop
humanized pigs that do not provoke a rejection response or transfer
viruses to people. The company last month raised $38 million in
venture funding.
Eventually, Church said, the process could enable researchers to
harvest a dozen different organs and tissues from a single pig.
Church estimates the first transplants involving humanized pig
organs could occur in a clinical trial later this year, but these
would only be used on people too sick to receive human organs.
Genome pioneer Craig J. Venter’s Synthetic Genomics Inc has been
working for two years with United Therapeutics on editing the pig
genome and mixing in human cells to overcome the complex issues
involved in immune rejection. "It's not like changing a couple genes
and you've got it solved," Venter said.
Stanton would not rule out breeding genetically modified animals,
but said Smithfield's first ventures will likely involve whole pig
organs that go through decellularization - a process in which
existing cells are washed away and replaced with human cells.
Miromatrix Medical Inc, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for example, is
using whole pig livers to make a surgical mesh used in hernia repair
and breast reconstruction, and it is working toward developing
replacement livers, hearts and kidneys.
Church welcomes the involvement of a big pork producer. "Even though
we've got companies like eGenesis that would make the first pigs,
you still need someone who will breed them and do it to scale," he
said.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Michael Hirtzer; Editing by
Leslie Adler)
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