While forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience in China has drawn worldwide condemnation, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been investing heavily in controversial research on using genetically modified pigs as a source of human organ transplantation, touting it as a “world first” achievement.
According to Chinese media, in 2020, gene editing-related startups in China alone received about 2 billion yuan ($310 million) in funding.
CCP mouthpiece Xinhua published a special feature on Sept. 22, 2020, saying that Chinese scientists had made another breakthrough in xenotransplantation technology in genetically edited pigs.
Xenotransplantation is a medical procedure whereby animal organs are transplanted into humans.
Xinhua reported that the team of Yang Luhan, founder of Qihan Biotech in Hanzhou, China, and cofounder and chief scientist of Cambridge gene-editing company eGenesis in Boston, had created a prototype xenograft with clinical potential, successfully solving two major xenograft safety challenges: removing porcine endogenous retroviruses from pigs and enhancing xenograft immunocompatibility.
Yang’s research was also published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on Sept. 21, 2020. Co-authors of this paper include Qihan Biotech, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, eGenesis in Boston, and Yunnan Agricultural University in China.
The paper describes how CRISPR-Cas9 knockout and transposon gene insertion technologies were used to modify a group of genetic cassettes in pigs to further enhance “the pigs’ immunological compatibility and blood-coagulation compatibility with humans.”
The paper says, “The engineered pigs exhibit normal physiology, fertility and germline transmission of the 13 genes and 42 alleles edited.”
Genetically Modified Pigs for Human Organ Transplant
Prior to this, there had been several technological breakthroughs in genetically modifying pigs to make their organs more suitable for human transplantation, several of which resulted from the work of Yang Luhan’s mentor at Harvard Medical School, Professor George Church.
In 2015, Yang, along with Church, founded eGenesis in Boston, which received $38 million and $100 million in two rounds of funding in 2017 and 2019, and another $125 million in March 2021 in a third investment round.
BY JENNIFER BATEMAN AND JENNIFER ZENG
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