Patients are so sick and tired of waiting years for a transplant that they’re signing up in droves to receive vital organs from pigs

On a farm in the southern US state of Virginia, David Ayares and his research teams are breeding genetically modified pigs to transplant their organs into human patients. Revivicor, the biotech company Ayares leads, is at the forefront of xenotransplantation research — the implantation of animal organs into humans — which aims to solve a chronic organ shortage that has thousands of Americans dying each year.

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