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01/21/1998 21:16 EST

Current Transplant Experiments
By The Associated Press

Types of xenotransplants -- the transplanting of living animal organs or
cells -- experiments currently being researched:

--Diacrin Inc. has implanted neuronal cells from pig fetuses into 24
Parkinson's and Huntington's disease patients. The cells may perform like
human fetal cell implants, which in rare experiments have signaled brain
improvement.

--Cytotherapeutics Inc. has implanted cow adrenal cells into the spinal
cords of 36 dying cancer  patients with untreatable pain. The cells make
substances that block pain signals. Studies of about 100 patients are being
prepared.

--Neocrin Inc. encapsulates pig pancreas cells to avoid the immune system
while stimulating insulin production in diabetes patients. It plans to test
50 patients.

--Numerous scientists are pursuing pig livers or liver cells for liver
failure patients. Circe Biomedical ran the blood of 54 patients through a
pig liver outside the body as a "bridge" to keep them alive pending human
transplant or their own liver's recovery.

--One AIDS patient received an implant of baboon bone marrow that didn't
appear to last longer than 13 days, but future attempts are planned.

Several dozen attempts at transplanting entire animal organs into people,
dating back to 1905, have failed to keep the patient alive for more than a
few days. But scientists are developing genetically  engineered animal
organs that promise to resist human immune attack, with new trials predicted
within a few years.