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Biotech / Medical : Biotransplant(BTRN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (360)	8/19/1999 6:41:00 PM
From: Pseudo Biologist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1475

This is of some interest (appearing in the 20-August issue of Science). Is the "microchimerism" observed relevant to the Sykes-Sachs work? Or is this kind of apples and oranges? sciencemag.org Search for Cross-Species Transmission of Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus in Patients Treated with Living Pig Tissue Khazal Paradis, 1* Gillian Langford, 1 Zhifeng Long, 2 Walid Heneine, 3 Paul Sandstrom, 3 William M. Switzer, 3 Louisa E. Chapman, 3 Chris Lockey, 2 David Onions, 4 The XEN 111 Study Group, 5 Edward Otto 2 Pig organs may offer a solution to the shortage of human donor organs for transplantation, but concerns remain about possible cross-species transmission of porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV). Samples were collected from 160 patients who had been treated with various living pig tissues up to 12 years earlier. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and protein immunoblot analyses were performed on serum from all 160 patients. No viremia was detected in any patient. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 159 of the patients were analyzed by PCR using PERV-specific primers. No PERV infection was detected in any of the patients from whom sufficient DNA was extracted to allow complete PCR analysis (97 percent of the patients). Persistent microchimerism (presence of donor cells in the recipient) was observed in 23 patients for up to 8.5 years. 1 Imutran Ltd. (a Novartis Pharma AG company), Post Office Box 399, Cambridge CB2 2YP, UK. 2 Genetic Therapy Inc. (a Novartis company), Gaithersburg, MD 20878, USA. 3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Center for Infectious Diseases, Division of AIDS, STD, and TB Laboratory Research, HIV and Retrovirology Branch), Atlanta, GA 30333, USA. 4 Q-One Biotech Ltd. and Department of Veterinary Pathology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G20 OXA, UK. 5 Dmitry Shirokov (St. Petersburg, Russia); Achilles Demetriou (Los Angeles, CA, USA); Peter M. Vogt (Bochum, Germany); Annika Tibell and Carl Groth (Huddinge, Sweden); Robert Elliott (Auckland, New Zealand); Didier Samuel (Villejuif, France); Daniel Shouval (Jerusalem, Israel); Yaacov Baruch (Haifa, Israel); Ran Tur-Kaspar (Petach-Tikva, Israel); Michael E. Breimer (Göteborg, Sweden); A. Joseph Tector (Montreal, Canada); Claudy Mullon (Circe Biomedical, Lexington, KY, USA); Sabine Wehr and Kamal Abeywickrama (Novartis Pharma, Basel, Switzerland); Mi-Li Gu (GTI); Laurie O'Rourke (Imutran); Aprille Matthews, Vedapuri Shanmugam, and Althaf I. Hussain (CDC).