Progress in Xenotransplantation Essay

The medical practice of organ transplantation has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 50 years. Each year the medical profession takes more risk with decisions regarding transplants, how to allocate for organs, and most recently conducting transplants on children with adult organs. “An organ transplantation is a surgical operation where a failing or damaged organ in the human body is removed and replaced with a new one” (Caplan, 2009). Not all organs can be transplanted. The term “organ transplant” typically refers to transplants of solid organs: heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas, and intestines. There are two ways of receiving an organ transplant: from a living human or an organ from a

Rejection can't be totally avoided; nonetheless, a level of safe resilience to the transplant develops. A few ideas have been proposed to clarify the advancement of halfway resistance. They incorporate clonal erasure and the advancement of anergy in benefactor particular lymphocytes, improvement of silencer lymphocytes, or variables that down-direct the insusceptible reaction against the join. Different speculations incorporate the steadiness of benefactor determined dendritic cells in the beneficiary that advance an immunologically interceded chimeric state between the beneficiary and the transplanted

In December of 1954, the first human organ transplant was performed in the United States between identical twin brothers. In the past sixty years, organ transplantation has become the gold standard in the treatment of organ failure from a number of underlying causes with dramatic improvements to recipients’ health and quality of life (Kaserman, 2007). From the first kidney transplant in 1954 to the late 1980’s, one of the biggest advancements was the use of cadaver organs. Organ rejection was the primary concern from the transplant team who knew that the use of cadaver organs posed higher risks of failure.

The shortage of organ transplants has been an ongoing crisis for years; the growing list of patients awaiting transplants has no end in sight, and the number of people dying while they waste away on the waiting list is not going to go down unless something changes.Society has turned away from alternatives to our archaic organ donation program, but there are other options available.The transplant community and society as a whole need to step back and rethink--to adopt a more open-minded views on organs as a resource in order to save lives and make meaningful changes to the national transplant program.

These stated facts very well implicate an imperative need to investigate promising alternative treatment strategies as well preventive measures. Impairment in cardiac functions, organ (heart) failure or trigger of compensatory mechanisms (hypertrophy, neurohumoral system activation, autokrine, paracrine stimulation, etc) are the result of loss in cardiac myocytes predominantly due to myocardial infarction (Zimmermann and Eschenhagen, 2003). In addition to the traditional treatment of

Throughout time Organ transplanting has been an important medical procedure that has been present, not only in the United States, but around the globe. It is the process of surgically removing an organ from on patient and then transplanting it into the other. This practice is usually used when a recipient’s own organ fails to function properly or has

     The audience for this paper is comprised of those readers looking to gain knowledge on the issue of xenotransplantation. This group of people is unaware of the dynamics of the ethical arguments surrounding this current issue. This audience does not have a specific age or belief, reflecting the varied positions of the argument. Due to this hunger for factual information, they do not wish to have someone else’s views imposed on them. Instead, they wish to define and establish a view of their own.      

He claims “Xenotransplantation should still be given serious thought because of its potential to alleviate the organ shortage crisis and ultimately improve the human condition” (Sharma 25). However, Sharma also gives some insight as to why doctors should be cautious when taking Xeno to the next step. He states that “Violent immune responses have been known to occur in individuals where an incompatible organ has been placed in a host, with death being known to occur in a matter of hours”(27). Sharma’s statement raises thought of the possible risks associated with transplantation. One of the risks is hyper-acute rejection, where the recipient’s immune system quickly identifies the animal organ as a foreign entity and attacks it (27). Despite the risks being great, people considering xenotransplantation often have no other

The medical industry had been achieving more in the stage of medical advancements, though they are still in the early phase. Artificial organs have been one of those achievements. Although they have achieved such, artificial organs are not perfect. Most doctors as well as patients would prefer to replace a dying organ with a compatible human organ, rather than with an artificial or animal organ. Yet due to a there being less organs donated than recipients, artificial and animal organs are becoming more common in transplants. Most of this issue is because people are unaware of how organ donation works, the organs that can be donated, how many people are in need, and the advancements that have happened in the field. Organ donation saves hundreds of lives every year, but many lives are recklessly lost due to a shortage of organ donors.

Glucose is an important metabolic substrate for the growth and development of cells as it is an important metabolic substrate for most living things and is an energy source for many cells throughout the body. (1) Specialised cells in the pancreas, called beta cells, detect glucose in the bloodstream and release insulin so that glucose can enter cells down he concentration gradient.

The other challenge to transplanting organs is the body’s immune system rejecting the procedure because it is unnatural to it. The body’s immune system is set up to defend the body against any foreign disease-causing bacteria, viruses and or fungi. A procedure like this is alienated by the body at time because it

Hyperacute rejection usually occurs within minutes to hours once the organ has been transplant to the recipient. The hyperacute

Local cardiac preconditioning or postconditioning has been shown to have direct cardioprotective effects against myocardial ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) injury. Likewise, remote ischemic pre- or post-conditioning is a phenomenon whereby brief episodes of short periods of ischemia/reperfusion stimuli executed in distant tissues or organs may exert protective effects in the heart and render the myocardium more tolerant to a subsequent sustained episode of ischemia or reperfusion injury. Studies have shown that this remote cardioprotective trigger can be used in distant vascular beds (lower and upper limbs, cerebral, renal, mesenteric, intestinal, renal and abdominal arteries)1. However, it is unclear whether brief ischemic conditioning of visceral organs such as the liver, the largest metabolic organ in the body, can produce cardioprotection. A few reports have shown that liver

It is well established that cardiomyopathy can be recapitulated by experimental immunization with cardiac myosin plus an adjuvant or with the administration of antibodies against troponin I and the β1-adrenergic receptor (33, 28, 34, 35). Similarly, we provide evidence that autoimmunity against specific M2AChR epitopes (M2AChR-el2 and M2AChR-il3) may play a causal role in DCM. Therefore, BALB/c mice were DNA-immunized using a gene gun with plasmids encoding partial epitopes to induce potentially harmful anti-M2AChR-el2 and anti-M2AChR-il3 antibodies and establish cardiomyopathy. All mice progressively developed left ventricle dilation and dysfunction detected by echocardiography analyses (approximately 10-20 weeks post-immunization). Next, we mimicked the presence of autoantibodies

Physicians today are faced with a growing list of patients awaiting transplants for organs that have failed, but there are not enough donors to meet these needs. Countries all over the world have a “human organ shortage” and the waiting lists for organ transplants only seem to grow longer (Melo 427). In the United States 62,000 patients needed a kidney, liver, or pancreatic transplant in the year 2001. Xenotransplantation, which refers to the transplantation of organs, cells, or tissues from animal species into human beings, has been heralded as a promising technology that will help us save more lives and lessen the dire shortage of transplantable organs.