A 56-year-old man with liver failure has become the first living person to be surgically connected to a genetically modified pig liver, say the team that conducted the surgery. The pig organ filtered the man’s blood for a few days while he waited for a human liver transplant, they say.
It’s a weird case, but I know there’s one company working on it to regrow foreskins for guys who wish they hadn’t been circumcised.
They’re making progress, but still probably a few years out, and I feel like that kind of says a lot why you haven’t seen news about it- it’s just not there yet. I’m pretty sure a liver is lot more complex than a foreskin, so if we can’t even manage that yet a liver is still a long way off.
The way this kind of research goes kind of tends to have a lot of plateaus, lots of researchers working on it and not making much progress until someone has a major breakthrough, then it plateaus again until the next big thing. Sometimes those breakthroughs lead to something actually deliverable as a treatment/procedure/product, other times it’s just a stepping stone to get to the next one.
The foreskin research is just the tip of the spear for this promising, if sensitive, area. Even if they make errors and have to retract, there’s nothing stopping what’s coming.
5/7
they have successfully made a wallet from the tissue, but if you rub it it turns into a set of luggage.