science

14360 readers

230 users here now

just science related topics. please contribute

note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry

Rule 1) Be kind.

lemmy.world rules: https://mastodon.world/about

I don't screen everything, lrn2scroll

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

159

Second person to receive experimental pig heart transplant dies nearly six weeks after procedure (edition.cnn.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago

It's not really an investment thing from my POV. Sure, throwing money at it will speed up research a bit, but there are a huge number of challenges that need to be overcome first, the biggest of these would probably be tissue perfusion - cells tend to die due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. Way too many issues with printing right now. Xenografts are a safer and quicker bet right now because you need to consider immunogenics anyway - if you can't make pig hearts work, you likely won't get patient-specific implants to work either. It's not quite as easy as just 3D-Printing patient stem cells.