On the 9th of November 2016, the European Collaborative projects TransLink and Xenoislet joined together in a public dissemination event: the Conference on “Research on animal-derived products for use in the clinic – Results from EU collaborative projects”.
Students and international professionals attended the iconic Wilkins Main Building at University College London and got key insightsinto xenotransplantation for both heart valve deterioration and diabetes treatment from the top experts in the fields.
Translink is a project devoted to assessing the mid-to long-term risk factors and improve the outcome of animal derived Bioprosthetic Heart Valve (BHV) implants. In this project the mission of Avantea is to generate modified pig and bovine tissues eliminating the xeno-antigens recognised as responsible for the BHV degeneration 15 years post implantation.
Avantea presented the final results of characterization of its pigs and updated on the promising work on bovines. The next Translink project meeting will be held in Cremona on 15th-16th May 2017 in the laboratories of Avantea and it will be anticipated by a training course on genome editing in pigs.
The Xenoislet project aims to enable successful transplantation of pig insulin-producing cells into human type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients by using pig transgenesis and alginate macroencapsulation. In this project Avantea was able to generate low PERV targeted transgenic pigs whose pancreatic islets secrete insulin at levels comparable to that of human islets without side effects.
Prof. Cesare Galli presented his report “Developing transgenic pigs for organ xenotransplantation into humans” and updated the scientific community on the most recent achievements of Avantea in the field of transgenic pig creation through advanced CRISPR/Cas9 technology.
