BLACKSBURG.-Some people who develop a strange and terrifying allergy to red meat after being bitten by a tick can still eat pork from an unusual source: genetically modified pigs created for organ transplant research.
But don’t look for it in supermarkets. The company that breeds these special pigs shares its scarce supply for free with some allergy sufferers.
“We get hundreds and hundreds of orders,” said David Ayares, president of Revivor Inc., as he opened a freezer packed with packages of ground pork, ham, ribs and pork chops.
The allergy is known as alpha-gal syndrome, named after a sugar present in the tissues of almost all mammals — except humans and primates. It can also cause a strong reaction a few hours after eating beef, pork or any other red meat, or certain mammal products such as milk or gelatin.
But where do organ transplants fit in? There aren’t enough donated human organs to meet the need, so researchers are trying to use pig organs instead — and that same alpha-gel sugar is a huge hurdle. It causes the human immune system to immediately destroy the transplanted organ from a regular pig. So the first gene Revivicor turned off when it began genetically modifying pigs for xenotransplants was the one that makes alpha-gel sugar.
While xenotransplantation remains experimental, Revivicor pigs were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020 to be used as a food source and a potential source of human therapy. The FDA determined that there was no detectable level of alpha-gene in several generations of these pigs.
Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, is not a food company — it researches xenotransplantation — and has not found any agricultural companies interested in selling its pork.
In any case, “this is FDA-approved porcine research, so it needs to be delivered to patients,” were Ayares’ words when he began shipping a few years ago.
Source: With information from AP
