重大突破--猪肾成功移植入人体(3)

Pig xenotransplants offer a way to potentially give more people a chance to get an organ that would save their life.

猪器官移植提供了一种方法，可能让更多的人有机会获得可以挽救生命的器官。

So the current paradigm of somebody having to die for someone else to live is not working.

一个人必须死，另一个人才能活，这个现行的模式行不通。

And we need an alternative, sustainable renewable source of organs and xenotransplantation is the most promising right now.

我们需要一种可替代的、可持续的、可再生的器官来源，而异种器官移植是目前最有望成功的。

The pig organs used in these transplants have been genetically modified so they don’t produce a sugar called α-Gal, which is found in pigs and causes the human immune system to attack, or reject the organ.

这些移植中使用的猪器官经过了基因改造，这样猪器官就不会产生“α-半乳糖”。在猪体内发现的这种糖会导致人体免疫系统攻击或器官排斥。

Rejection is already a problem for human-to-human transplants, but pig organs pose a special challenge.

排斥反应已经是人与人之间移植的一个问题，但猪器官移植提出了一个特殊的挑战。

Two humans are much more alike than a human and a pig, right?

人和人的相似度高于人和猪，对吧？

So you can imagine, just the variation in what we call antigens, different carbohydrates and proteins that–the genetic code is just really different between a pig and human.

你可以想象，人和猪之间存在抗原差异，碳水化合物、蛋白质也不同，遗传密码也是大相径庭。

There's a lot of potential targets for the human immune system—less so when you have two humans.

人类免疫系统有很多潜在的攻击目标——当移植发生在两个人身上时会减少。

I asked Montgomery what it was like to actually do this xenotransplant, knowing how much was at stake for the field if it didn’t go as planned.

我问蒙哥马利，做这种异种器官移植是什么感觉，因为我知道如果不按计划进行，这个领域将面临多大的风险。

He’s a pretty calm person—just as you’d expect a transplant surgeon to be.

他是一个相当冷静的人——正如你所期望的一名移植外科医生一样。

When you're doing something that hasn't been done before, you do feel this tremendous weight.

当你做一些以前从未做过的事情时，你确实会感到压力山大。

And, you know, it's very clear that we're not going to have many shots on goal here that don't end in success. I'm very aware of that.

很明显，不成功的次数很少。我非常清楚这一点。

But I've been at this for 35 years, and once I get in the operating room…and it is an experience, where everything just kind of collapses down onto the task at hand.

但我在这一行已经干了35年了，一旦我进入手术室，我会经历所有的事情都被手头的任务压倒了的感觉。

And any thoughts or doubts or anything that you have in your mind quickly go away, and you're just focused on getting the job done.

你脑子里的任何想法、疑虑或任何东西都会很快消失，你只需要专注于完成工作。

This was actually the fifth xenotransplant he and his colleagues at NYU have done using a decedent model.

这实际上是他和纽约大学的同事们使用死者进行的第五例异种器官移植手术。

Up until 2021, all of the xenotransplants from genetically edited pigs had been put in primates.

直到2021年，所有经过基因编辑的猪的器官都被移植到了灵长类动物体内。

So there had never been a pig-to-human transplant that had been done.

还未有过手术将猪器官移植到人体内。

And we did the first one in September of 2021.

我们在2021年9月做了第一例这样的手术。

And we put that organ into an individual who had been declared dead by neurologic criteria, so they were brain dead.

我们将猪器官移植到了一个人身上，这个人根据神经学标准已被宣布死亡，也就是脑死亡。

But the heart was still beating, and that individual was being maintained on a ventilator.

但这个人心脏仍在跳动，靠呼吸机维持着生命。

And the idea there was that we had an opportunity to test one of these organs in someone who couldn't be harmed if things didn't work out well.

当时的想法是，我们有机会在人体内测试这些器官中的一个，即使手术进展不顺利也不会伤害人体。

NYU soon did another kidney xenotransplant, and a team at the University of Alabama did one as well.

纽约大学很快又做了一例异种肾脏移植手术，阿拉巴马大学的一个研究小组也做了一例异种肾脏移植手术。

Then NYU did two heart xenotransplants.

纽约大学随后又做了两例异种心脏移植手术。

But these previous experiments only lasted a few days before the decedent was taken off of life support.

不过，在死者被取消生命维持系统前，这些先前的实验只持续了几天。