Dr. William Beschorner: research and contributions

¶ … thousands of patients waiting on a day-to-day basis for organ transplants that could potentially be the last chance for their survival. Yet many of them will not get that opportunity because transplantable human organs are rare to come by, resulting only through accidents and other tragedies to others. For researchers and doctors such as Dr. William Beschorner, the possibility of having an organ farm, is the next step towards eliminating the problem of the dearth of organs for transplant patients.

William Beschorner is one of the leading experts within the field of xenotransplants, or transplanting organs from one species to another. He believes that this is the solution that to the problem of usable organs. Beschorner is the leader of a University of Nebraska Medical Center team that works on transplanting hearts and other major blood vessels from pigs to sheep. His ultimate belief is that pigs can be used as a source of transplant organs for human beings. The specifics of his research deals with how to get the human body to adopt an animal organ, it is the natural response of our bodies to reject anything alien. Current research methods centers on the use of very powerful immunosuppressant drugs that disable the immune system from rejecting such a transplanted organ. However, these drugs have the serious side effects of severe kidney damage, high blood pressure as well as strong likelihood of infections and tumors. Beschorner, who began his research into this subject at John Hopkins, left the company after making his discovery and eventually started his own company. Ximerex is "developing platform technologies for the treatment of organ failure" (Ximerex, npg). His research now centers on how he can translate the success he has found with the use of pigs to sheep xenotransplants and adopt this strategy towards humans.

The core concept behind his revolutionary research is that by injecting cells from a potential donor into the host, the host will be able to accept transplants later on. This technique was successfully used between sheep and pigs. Beschorner used this technique to inject bone marrow from sheep into fetal pigs. As a result, the pigs were born with a tolerance to sheep cells. The pigs that were produced ultimately are transgenic, which means that they have genetic material from two different species within their body. Using the same strategy, he was able to transplant the aorta of these pigs into sheep with strong acceptance rates. He has found that "the tolerance goes both directions, the pig become tolerant to the sheep cells, and the sheep cells in the pig are programmed to become tolerant to pig cells" (NPG). This revolutionary technique is what Beschorner wishes to adapt to the next stage of his experiment. In one experiment, Beschorner grafted pig hearts onto the necks of the sheep. As a result, the sheep's blood would flow through the heart but it didn't replace the sheep's own heart. Such experiments demonstrated that only seven of the thirty five within the test actually experienced vascular rejection, whereas all of the sheep receiving hearts from unmodified pigs exhibited vascular rejection.

The near-term implications of Berchorner's work could have a profound influence on organ transplants and the future of patient treatments. Researchers will inject human liver cells into fetal pigs; these pigs will be bred with a "suicide gene" that will be triggered to destroy their own livers. His hope is that human cells will then take the initiative to repopulate the pig liver, thus creating a synthesis of the two within the liver. This current study could lead to breeding pigs specifically for the purpose of human liver transplants. Even now, the use of pig livers are being used as a mechanism to help patients survive a few hours longer while waiting for human liver transplants. Berchorner's research may eventually lead to the design of hybrid livers, which also could be used in research on human liver diseases. He argues that the next step is to use the same technique on baboons, which are much closer to humans than sheep. If this step is successful, then within the next five years the possibility of human testing will become a reality.