Omaha Firm Wins $2 Million Grant

By Bob Reeves

Lincoln Journal Star

An Omaha-based company has received a $2 million federal grant to develop technology that could make possible the transplantation of livers from pigs to human patients.

Dr. William Beschorner, president of Ximerex Inc., said the three-year grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology would fund research in how to modify a pig's liver so it produces human proteins, making it compatible for transplantation into humans.

The technology could help meet the severe shortage of human organ donors, Beschorner said.

Some 4,000 liver transplants are performed in the United States each year, with more than 14,000 high-priority patients are on the waiting list for liver transplants. As many as 50,000 patients could benefit each year from a liver transplant if donor organs were available, said Beschorner, a professor of surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

The grant is part of $274 million awarded this year to 54 industrial research projects through the U.S. Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program. Of those, 15 went to biotechnology projects, Beschorner said.

The Ximerex grant will be used to develop genetically modified pigs.

First, Beschorner explained, a "suicide gene" will be injected into the livers of living pigs, causing some of their cells to die. Then cellular material from human livers will be implanted into the pig livers with the hope that they will repopulate the livers with human cells.

If the experiments are successful, the result will be a "hybrid" liver made up of both human and pig cells. Eventually, as transplant technology is developed, such livers could be transplanted into human patients and would perform the same functions as human livers, Beschorner said.

Over the past three years, Beschorner has directed a project in which researchers successfully transplanted hearts from pigs into sheep. The next phase will involve transplantation of organs from pigs to baboons. The process, known as xenotransplantation, eventually could make animal organs available for humans.

Beschorner was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes in Baltimore, Md., where he did research in transplantation. In 1995, he left Johns Hopkins to found Ximerex, a private company seeking to develop technologies for using pig organs in human transplants.

Pigs offer promise as a source for transplants, he said, because their organs are similar in size and configuration to those of humans.

Xenotransplant research has been criticized by such groups as the Campaign for Responsible Transplantation and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which raise concerns about the possible spread of animal diseases to humans.

Beschorner said he believed the risk of disease could be minimized by raising pigs in sterile conditions and carefully screening donor animals.

Reach Bob Reeves at breeves@journalstar.com or 473-7212.

Copyright © 2000 Lincoln Journal Star.

This article posted November 10, 2000.