Pig cell transplant trial approved

[admin]

A controversial trial with huge potential for people with diabetes has got the green light after years of refusals.

It will see animal tissue transplanted into humans, a process known as xenotransplantation. But some fear this could one day backfire and give rise to a deadly retrovirus.

Type-1 diabetes patient Hayden Vink injects himself five times each day to stay alive.

"I've had diabetes for eight years now. I can't really remember what life was like without diabetes," he says.

But he's excited to hear cells transplanted from a pig could one day help him produce his own insulin.

The government has given Auckland biotech company Living Cell Technologies the conditional go-ahead for an eight-patient trial at Middlemore Hospital.

"Huge excitement and relief. It's been a long time coming," says Professor Bob Elliott of Living Cell Technologies.

In fact it has been 12 years since the very first pig cell trial in New Zealand. Six patients were lined up back then and each had 700 million insulin-producing pig pancreas cells planted into their abdomen.

But the trials were stopped short due to fears that a pig retrovirus could one day emerge and lead to an AIDS-like epidemic.

But last year the Bioethics Council lifted a blanket ban on xenotransplantation and after much consultation, the government is now satisfied the risks are minimal.

"The risk is not zero but the risk is negligible and such risk that there is will be extremely carefully managed," says David Cunliffe, Health Minister.

The risk will be managed by having all tissue samples archived and the trial overseen by an independent safety board.

"By being so thorough in the assessment this has world standing and it's a world first," says Elliottt.

But not everyone is convinced.

"I guess the major concern boils down to who's taking the risk and who's going to be liable if something goes wrong," says John Carapiet of GE Free New Zealand.

The pigs they will use in the trial are a pathogen-free herd from the Auckland Islands, now being housed in Southland waiting for the trial.

"It'll bring diabetics I think, something they've all been wanting, which is a self-regulating cell which will produce insulin on demand and stop producing insulin when it's not needed," says Elliott.

Hayden Vink and thousands of others will be watching the trial results closely.