From California to Spain: Growing Human Organs in Pigs

Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte in Murcia, Spain, in 2015
El Mundo photo

The ongoing tale of pigs, people and their organs moved along during the weekend with a fresh chapter about a Spaniard and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Ca.

Reporter Bradley Fikes wrote a lengthy piece in the San Diego Union-Tribune dealing with Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte and his quest to grow human organs in pigs.

Izpisúa Belmonte has a lab at Salk and another in Spain. Fikes reported that the researcher received a $2.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health last week "to advance his research with monkey cells implanted into pig embryos."

Fikes wrote,

"Since monkeys are biologically similar to humans, analysis of pig-monkey chimeras should yield insights that can be applied to eventual production of human organs, he said. And unlike mice, pigs are large enough to grow usable human organs."

In Spain, Fikes said, Izpisua Belmonte is forging ahead at the same time with human-pig work.

The research is touchy for obvious reasons. But Fikes wrote that "the shortage of organs that causes nearly two dozen Americans — and many others around the world — to die each day while awaiting a transplant."

Izpisúa Belmonte is making progress, according to the newspaper report. Fikes wrote,

"After years of experiments, in 2015 his team reported success in coaxing a newly identified type of human stem cell to not only live in mouse embryos, but also integrate into the embryos’ structure. Those embryos weren’t allowed to develop further because of U.S. regulations."

Izpisúa Belmonte has received $6.5 million in three awards from the California stem cell agency, but none of those grants are currently active.  

Growing Human Organs in Pigs? Time for California to Step Up?

Looking for a new heart? Need a new kidney? How about a pancreas?

All of those priceless human organs are in short supply. And a Stanford law professor says it is time to get moving on developing more of them.

In an opinion piece last week in the Los Angeles Times, Hank Greely said,

Hank Greely

"Today we face the possibility of babies getting organs grown in human/nonhuman chimeras — beasts that are pigs except for a single human organ. To the uninitiated, this may sound more like the dark arts than modern medicine, but pursuing careful research and potential clinical use of these chimeras is both proper and important.

"Every day about 30 Americans die because they can't get an organ transplant. Upward of 120,000 Americans are on transplant waiting lists. We are, medically, on the cusp of being able to save these lives in new ways: repairing failing organs with new genes or stem cells, building mechanical organs and growing replacement organs."

Greely pointed to a researcher at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte. Greely said the scientist wants to "to grow a human pancreas in a pig to provide insulin-making cells for transplant into diabetics." Greely wrote,

"His research into how this can be accomplished is exciting but very early, yet even those preliminary steps have been threatened by a surprise moratorium announced last fall by the National Institutes of Health. NIH said it would not fund any research that involved putting human stem cells into earliest-stage nonhuman embryos. NIH said this wasn't a ban, but just a pause to consider the implications of such research and possibly to create a policy for it."

Greely did not mention it, but such research could be financed by California's $3 billion stem cell agency. In response to a question, Kevin McCormack, senior communications director for the agency, said,

"On a purely theoretical level CIRM has no objection to growing replacement organs or tissues in pigs, provided it met all CIRM’s rules and regulations. We fund research that does that all the time with mice and rats. Right now none of the research we fund is being used to do that."

The Salk scientist has already received $6.6 million in awards from the agency, but none of it involves growing people organs in pigs.

Greely noted that both California and the nation have an effective system for regulating such research and that the NIH should not be sitting on its hands. He said,

"That's no guarantee that human organs will grow in pigs, but we won't find out if Belmonte and others can't try."

No. 2 Exec at Salk Institute Leaving, Move Follows Retirement of President

Another top executive at the Salk Institute is leaving under circumstances that indicate that the move is not entirely voluntary, the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting.

Left to right, Irwin Jacobs, chair of Salk
 board; William Brody, president; Marsha
Chandler, executive vice president
Salk photo

She is Marsha Chandler, who was executive vice president and chief operating officer of the La Jolla, Ca., enterprise and who also once served as a director of the $3 billion California stem cell agency.

Gary Robbins reported her departure effective Aug. 31, saying that Salk released a statement that “suggests that Chandler's exit was not voluntary.”

The statement said:

"In order to provide the future Salk president with the greatest flexibility to determine the institute’s ideal executive management structure going forward, the executive committee of the board of trustees and the institute’s leadership have decided to restructure the executive team. Therefore, with respect to this decision, Marsha Chandler will be leaving…”

William Brody, president of Salk, announced last week that he would be leaving at the end of the year.

Robbins wrote,

“Chandler, 70, helped Brody to roughly triple the institute's endowment to $370 million and to help recruit a greater mix of scientists at the Salk, whose basic research has led to drugs to treat cancer, and improved treatments in diabetes, inflammation and obesity.”

Chandler served on the stem cell agency board from 2007 to 2009. She was replaced on the board by Brody, who left the position in 2012. Since then Salk has had no representative on the 29-member panel. Nearly all of the institutions that receive awards from the agency have representatives on the agency board.

California's Salk Institute Looking for New CEO

San Diego is a hotbed of biomedical research, so when one of the leaders of its top institutions leaves, it is significant news.

William Brody, Salk photo

William Brody, head of the Salk Institute and a former director of the California stem cell agency, will be retiring at the end of the year, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported yesterday.

Brody, 71, came to Salk in 2009 and has wrapped up a $300 million fundraising effort that has stabilized the nonprofit after a period of financial uncertainty, Gary Robbins reported in the newspaper’s story.

Robbins wrote,

"'Salk has always had a much smaller endowment than other comparable institutions, but with decline in funding for biomedical research we needed a buffer and that is what Bill achieved,' said Terry Sejnowski, a Salk neuroscientist. 'None of his predecessors were able to do this. We don't have wealthy alumni or grateful patients, just the best basic science.'

"But if you compare where we are today with Scripps (Research) and medical schools around the country that are bleeding faculty and debt we are solvent if not plush, and continue to recruit the best young faculty. Looking to the future we need to find another Bill Brody."

Brody served on the governing board of the $3 billion state stem cell agency from August 2009 to the end of 2012. His predecessor at Salk, Richard Murphy, also served on the board and as interim president of the agency. Salk has not had a representative on the board since Brody left. 

Salk had received $52 million from the agency, which ranks the institute 12th on the list of recipients of awards. When Brody left the agency board in late 2011, Salk had chalked up $37 million in stem cell agency awards.

Salk officials said they will launch a nationwide search for a replacement. Scripps Research, also located nearby in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, is also looking for a new CEO with top notch fundraising abilities.