Four pig hearts, engrafted to the blood vessels of baboons, did notturn black and promptly perish of acute hyperimmune trans-speciesrejection. The four alien organs kept beating, one for 30 hours.

Those transgenic donor porkers carried in their genomes the genesencoding human complement regulatory proteins (CRP), whichprevent the recipient's immune system from lysing and killing foreignorgans on sight.

Duke University's Jeffrey Platt reported this successful next-stepxenotransplantation experiment in the May issue of Nature Medicine.His paper's title: "Human complement regulatory proteins protectswine-to-primate cardiac xenografts from humoral injury."

Last February in Nice, France, British xenotransplant pioneer DavidWhite told the Seventh European Congress on Biotechnology how hehooked up the CRP-expressing heart of a transgenic pig to a closed-loop blood circuit. It beat through a four-hour test run, whereas non-transgenic organs conked out in 30 minutes. (See BioWorld Today,Feb, 22, 1995, p. 1.)

White, of Cambridge University, told BioWorld that he is nowplanning in vivo porcine organ transplants in cynomolgus monkeys.

Second Consortium Sequences Polycystic Kidney Gene

Scientists at Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass.,are lead authors on a paper titled: "Polycystic kidney disease: thecomplete structure of the PKD1 gene and its protein," in last month'sCell, dated April 21.

Announcement of this feat, 10 years in the making, followed by ascant three weeks an article from Integrated Genetics, Framingham,Mass., in the April issue of Human Molecular Genetics. It tooreporting sequencing of the PKD1 gene, under the title: "Analysis ofgenomic sequence for the autosomal dominant polycystic kidneydisease (PKD1) gene predicts the presence of a leucine-rich repeat."(See BioWorld Today, March 31, 1995, p. 1.)

Listing the 26 co-authors in four research groups, American, Britishand German, which comprised Millennium's International PolycysticKidney Disease Consortium, Cell noted that several authors"contributed equally to the work."

The American PKD1 Consortium assembled by Integrated Geneticsincluded scientists from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions inBaltimore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory inNew Mexico.

Recombinant EPO Rescues Terminal Cancer Patient

After all other therapies had failed, a 40-year-old man with widelymetastasized end-stage renal carcinoma remains in total remission,and has for the past 18 months, apparently thanks to recombinanterythropoietin (EPO).

In a "Brief Communication" to the May 1 Annals of InternalMedicine, hematologist/oncologist Jonathan Rubins of Canandigua,N.Y. recounts his patient's case history:

In mid-1991, he lost one kidney to the cancer. He presented inDecember 1992 with metastatic masses in both lungs and at severalabdominal sites.

Despite antimetabolite therapy, and alpha-interferon, he grewincreasingly cachectic. These drugs were discontinued in mid-1993,and recombinant EPO treatment begun June 30. On July 4, in hiscachectic condition, the patient fell off his bicycle and broke his armso severely it had to be set with an indwelling metal rod.

"By this time," reads the physician's report, "the patient . . . seemedto be entering a terminal phase of his illness." He added, "ByDecember 1993, the patient had gained 60 pounds, and wascompletely asymptomatic." By May 1994, all metastases haddisappeared."

Rubins concluded: "The patient remains clinically well at the time ofthis writing, 18 months after stopping chemoimmunotherapy, andstarting recombinant human erythropoietin. [This] strongly suggests,but does not prove, a cause-and-effect relation." n

-- David N. Leff Science Editor

(c) 1997 American Health Consultants. All rights reserved.