Grow Your Immune System in a Pig’s Body
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How cool is this? Researchers at the University of Michigan grew human immune cells in developing mini pig fetuses and were then able to transplant them back into the person they came from with amazing results. The human cells extracted from the pig were not rejected by the donor’s own immune system. They were found to be fully functional in recognizing and fighting foreign cells.
What makes this discovery even more exciting is that the researchers were able to use the pigs to develop immune cells to deal with specific diseases. To test this, they vaccinated the pig against a specific pig pathogen, then extracted the human T-cells. These T-cells attacked the pig pathogen proving that this immunity developed within the pig.
The upshot of this is that instead of vaccinating people against diseases such as HIV, the pigs can be vaccinated and the resulting T-cells could be then be transferred back into the donor. Writes Andy Coughlan, from New Scientist, “This might work better than giving the vaccine to the person directly, as an adult’s immune system is often too mature to react.”
Could there be dormant pig viruses that could spread to humans? Could the human T-cells pick up pig molecules that the human body would then attack? Questions still remain but the technology is there to further explore the possibility of strengthening one’s immune system via using these mini pigs.
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