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Regenerative medicine

Interspecies pancreas transplants

Nature volume 542, pages 168–169 (2017)Cite this article

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A mouse pancreas grown in a rat controls blood-sugar levels when transplanted into a mouse that models type 1 diabetes. This achievement provides a tantalizing glimpse of how organs could be grown for therapeutic use. See Article p.191

There is a severe shortage of transplantable human organs. One conceptually simple, albeit technically (and ethically) challenging solution would be to grow human organs in animals. But first we must determine whether it is possible to grow a solid organ in a different species and use it to treat disease. Yamaguchi et al.1 report on page 191 that mouse pancreases can be grown in rat hosts, harvested and parts then transplanted into mice to reverse diabetes.

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Figure 1: A rat-grown mouse pancreas to treat diabetic mice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Qiao Zhou is in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.,

    Qiao Zhou

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  1. Qiao Zhou
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Correspondence to Qiao Zhou.

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Zhou, Q. Interspecies pancreas transplants. Nature 542, 168–169 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21490

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