Alexion Formed in 1992 by Yale students, initially created organs but had great success with implantation of pig nerve cells to repair spinal cord damage. In 1998 Alexion made headlines for worldwide success in repairing rat and monkey spinal cords.
Diacrin/Genzyme While founded in 1990, Diacrin was approved by the FDA for the first-ever clinical trial of pig cells transplanted into humans in 1996 and later that year joined with Genzyme to develop pig neural cells. In 2001, they found that pig neuro cell transplants did not always work better than the placebo treatment. Some patient's stories of the Frontline Report found on the (Home Page). |
Imutran by Novartis Imutran, funded by Novatris,created "Astrid" the world's first transgenic pig, carrying human genes to prevent the rejection by the recipients's immune system. These were eligible for human trials by 1996, and in 2001 they merged to form Immerge Bio Therapeutics . It is focused on the development of cells, tissues, and organs for xenotransplantation, and not on drug therapies or other transgenics.
PPL Therapeutics PPL is liscened to commercialze the cloning technoloy by Roslin Insititute that in 1997 created "Dolly", the first cloned mammal. In 2000, they created the first cloned pigs and later in the year, Infigen first cloned transgenic pigs. However, Geron, a northern corporation of Northern California, cut their funding to concentrate on stem cell work, but PPL continues its studies of Xenotransplantation.
  All information found on this page came from Citation (3). |
