内容摘要：some of its AI chips and supercomputers in plants located in Arizona and Texas. Huang also accompanied

some of its AI chips and supercomputers in plants located in Arizona and Texas. Huang also accompanied

United Therapeutics’ designated pathogen-free facility in Christiansburg, Va., on May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)On the research farm, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” was serenading a piglet barn, where music acclimates the youngsters to human voices. In air-conditioned pens, the animals grunted excited greetings until it’s obvious their visitors brought no treats. The 3-week-olds darted back to the security of mom. Next door, older siblings laid down for a nap or checked out balls and other toys.

“It is luxury for a pig,” Ayares said. “But these are very valuable animals. They’re very smart animals. I’ve watched piglets play with balls together like soccer.”About 300 pigs of different ages live on this farm, nestled in rolling hills, its exact location undisclosed for security reasons. Tags on their ears identify their genetics.“There are certain ones I say hi to,” said Suyapa Ball, Revivicor’s head of porcine technology and farm operations, as she rubbed one pig’s back. “You have to give them a good life. They’re giving their lives for us.”

A subset of pigs used for the most critical experiments – those early attempts with people and the FDA-required baboon studies – are housed in more restricted, even cleaner barns.But in neighboring Christiansburg is the clearest signal that xenotransplantation is entering a new phase — the sheer size of United Therapeutics’ new pathogen-free facility. Inside the 77,000-square-foot building, the company expects to produce about 125 pig organs a year, likely enough to supply clinical trials.

David Ayares, president and chief scientific officer of Revivicor, looks at pigs at the company’s research farm near Blacksburg, Va., on May 29, 2024, where organs are retrieved for animal-to-human transplant experiments. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

David Ayares, president and chief scientific officer of Revivicor, looks at pigs at the company’s research farm near Blacksburg, Va., on May 29, 2024, where organs are retrieved for animal-to-human transplant experiments. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant,

that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney butAP correspondent Donna Warder reports that a racially biased test has kept thousands of Black patients from receiving a much-needed kidney transplant.

A few years ago, the National Kidney Foundation and American Society of Nephrology prodded laboratories to switch to race-free equations in calculating kidney function. Then the U.S. organ transplant network ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list.“The immediate question came up: What about the people on the list right now? You can’t just leave them behind,” said Dr. Martha Pavlakis of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former chair of the network’s kidney committee.