American public opinion about research involving human-animal chimeric embryos

SCI faculty member Walter Low and others recently published the results of a survey of whether the American public is ready to accept research involving human-animal chimeric embryos (HACE) in a variety of forms. This HACE research has the potential to answer significant questions in human developmental biology and be a source of human organs and tissues that can address the donor organ shortage across the globe.

Among the 430 Americans that participated in the survey, there was broad acceptance for at least some HACE research, with 83% accepting at least injection of human iPSCs into genetically modified swine embryos (step 1), 71% accepting production of a pig with a human pancreas (step 2), and 59% accepting clinical transplantation of the HACE-generated pancreas. (step 3).  Get more information about the study and its findings.