Wide-eyed piglets rushing to check out the visitors to their unusual barn just might represent the future of organ transplantation—and there's no rolling around in the mud here in Blacksburg, Virginia. The first gene-edited pig organs ever transplanted into people came from animals born on this special research farm in the Blue Ridge mountains—behind locked gates, where entry requires washing down your vehicle, swapping your clothes for medical scrubs, and stepping into tubs of disinfectant to clean your boots between each air-conditioned barn. "These are precious animals," said David Ayares of Revivicor Inc., who spent decades learning to clone pigs with just the right genetic changes to allow those first audacious experiments.
The biosecurity gets even tighter just a few miles away in Christiansburg, Virginia, where a new herd is being raised—pigs expected to supply organs for formal studies of animal-to-human transplantation as soon as next year. This massive first-of-its-kind building bears no resemblance to a farm. It's more like a pharmaceutical plant. And part of it is closed to all but certain employees who take a timed shower, don company-provided clothes and shoes, and then enter an enclave where piglets are growing up. Behind that protective barrier are some of the world's cleanest pigs. They breathe air and drink water that's better filtered against contaminants than what's required for people. Even their feed gets disinfected—all to prevent them from picking up any possible infections that might ultimately harm a transplant recipient.
"We designed this facility to protect the pigs against contamination from the environment and from people," says Matthew VonEsch of United Therapeutics, Revivicor's parent company. "Every person that enters this building is a possible pathogen risk." The AP got a peek at what it takes to clone and raise designer pigs for their organs—including a $75 million "designated pathogen-free facility" built to meet Food and Drug Administration safety standards for xenotransplantation. Read the full story here.
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