Brainless bodies and pig organs: does science back up Putin and Xi’s longevity claims? | Ageing

It is perhaps the extravagant exhibition of fatal weapons that prompted Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to think about mortality during this week’s military parade in Beijing.

It was more joke than serious discussions, but with 72, the Chinese president and his Russian counterpart can feel the cold hand on the shoulder more than Kim Jong-un, the 41-year-old North Korean leader who was walking next to them.

Speaking through an interpreter, XI told Putin that 70 is considered young today, which has encouraged Putin to say that human organs can now be transplanted several times, potentially allowing people to “avoid old age indefinitely”. “This century”, replied XI, “it may be possible to live at 150.”

It was a windy conversation, but the progress of organ transplantation reached the stage where procedures can prolong health life as well as save those who suffer from a terminal disease?

For private patients, the case of transplantation is clear. “When you have terminal kidneys, liver or cardiac diseases, transplantation adds years of life overall,” explains Reza Motallebzadeh, renal transplant teacher at UCL. “It’s absolutely vital.”

A long list of organs and tissues can now be transplanted, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, liver, small intestine, skin, bones, heart valves and corneas. And more organs are added. Earlier this year, a woman became the first in the United Kingdom to give birth after receiving a uterus given by her sister.

All over the world, the demand for organ transplants exceeds supply. In Great Britain, the waiting list for vital organ transplants has never been higher. With a limited supply, what the bodies exist go to those who benefit most – generally young and in terminal phase.

But what happens if we had an abundant supply of organs? Would it be logical to offer them to the elderly to keep them well? Motallebzadeh is skeptical. “Having an organ transplant is a massive operation and you have to be robustly physiologically to pass through it,” he said.

And this is not the only consideration, explains Motallebzadeh. “The three main causes of death in transplantation recipients are cancer, infection and cardiovascular disease. And many anti-rejection therapies have side effects that lead to it. ”

In short, having several surgery cycles and continuous doses of powerful anti-rejection drugs, which increase the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and deadly infections, could reduce lifespan rather than extend it.

Major efforts are underway to resolve the problem of organ shortage. A way is to use pig organs. The procedure, the xenotransplantation, remains experimental, but the doctors in New York have carried out pork and pig kidney transplants in people related to the brain to see how they get out of it.

In the past year, two living patients have received genetically modified pork kidneys. The changes have eliminated harmful pork genes, inactivated the viruses that are hidden in the pork genome which could wake up and cause infections and, above all, add human genes to make them more compatible.

The bodies were provided by Egenesis, a biotechnology company co-founded by geneticist George Church from Harvard University. He said that the two patients were “in good health and happy” and no longer on kidney dialysis.

The company has the approval of the United States Food and Drug Administration for a clinical trial in 33 patients. “If these 33 do as well for the first two, then it will be extended to the entire population,” said Church. “The number of pigs we need to make is a tiny fraction of the number consumed each year for bacon and pork chops.”

For the moment, the company focuses on the kidneys, the liver and the heart, but the church plans to provide all the normally transplanted organs and tissues from man to man.

Agricultural pigs for organs are a practice that will have its criticisms, but much more radical and ethical proposals are on the table. Earlier this year, researchers said that progress in stem cell biology and artificial uterus technology could allow scientists to create spare human bodies.

The process is convoluted, but involves making an embryo from a patient’s cells, deactivating the genes necessary to form a brain and grow it in an artificial uterus. The result is a brainless human body, designed to provide organs to its genetic parent.

“There is an Ick factor,” explains Carsten Charlesworth, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Stanford. “For many people, an arm is good, a liver is good and a kidney. But when you have everything except a brain, it looks more like man and people are worried.”

The church has great hopes for another approach. The liver and other organs could be genetically modified, in or out of the body, to be resistant to infection and release anti-aging compounds such as proteins that help the body maintain good health. “You transform the organ into anti-aging therapy,” he says. If this is done in situ, it avoids the need for major surgery, risky anti-rejection drugs and headless humans.

So, can people born this century live at 150? “Probably someone who will read your article will be the last person not to have the opportunity to live at 150,” explains Church. “It would be sad to be the person who is missing the cup, and I have the feeling that I am one of those people.”