Chimeras in medicine— Part 1: Xenotransplantation

ABC Radio in Australia interviewed Jian Feng, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics, in a story titled, "Chimeras in medicine," involving the possibility that in the future, humans may be able to grow organs in animals to be safely transplanted into humans. Feng says that while progress is being made in the field, certain advances are "pretty far off." Program co-host Carl Smith noted that, "There are plenty of hurdles to jump to reach that goal. One is that the chimeras created so far has a very small proportion of human cells, often around just one-tenth of 1%. Jian Feng's team recently celebrated creating a human–mouse chimera with a higher proportion, but this is still an area that will need more work."