Animal parts or proteins have previously been used for various clinical purposes.
Indeed, patients have previously been transplanted with hearts, kidneys, livers, pancreatic islets or neurons. However the clinical results have been rather disappointing, suggesting that several issues need to be adequately addressed first, in order to allow long term survival of animal parts in man.
It is worth mentioning that pig valves (as opposed to whole heart) are still being used in cardiac surgery whilst the use of porcine or bovine insulin for the treatment of diabetes and blood derived products such as clotting factors and murine monoclonal antibodies has been discontinued in the treatment of human diseases, although successful. Indeed, as far as the use of pig valves is concerned, it is fundamental to underline that these products have been chemically treated, and are functional but not living tissues that cannot therefore transmit infections to the recipient.
Regarding porcine and bovine insulin and monoclonal antibodies, these proteins have now been replaced by the recombinant human counterpart. |