Contemporary Issues Forum
Why A Pig Heart?
- SAT, JULY 12, 2025
- 3:00-4:00 PM
- Hall of Philosophy
SPEAKER:
Bartley Griffith MD, FACS, FRCS
Director of the Cardiac and Lung Transplant Programs and Vice Chair for Innovation, University of Maryland School of Medicine
TOPIC:
Dr. Bartley Griffith, the pioneering surgeon behind the world’s first transplant of a genetically modified pig heart into a human patient, explores the urgent question: Why a pig heart? In this talk, he addresses the critical shortage of human donor organs and the potential of xenotransplantation to bridge this gap. Attendees will gain insights into the science of genetically engineered pig organs, the ethical and clinical challenges of first-in-human trials, and the profound experiences of patients and families involved in these groundbreaking procedures.
Speaker Bio:
Bartley Griffith is an educator of surgical trainees, an NIH principal investigator since 1987, and an everyday heart surgeon. His clinical and investigational work has focused on the treatment of end-stage heart and lung disease. He has approached these tasks by novel surgeries and immunosuppression in heart and lung transplantation. The clinical burden of insufficient donor organs has been approached by bioengineering developments in the total artificial heart, ventricular assist devices, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), ambulatory ECMO, and most recently with the world’s only two pig-to-human heart transplants – Xeno Heart Transplantation. He has founded two successful medically-related start-up companies and has been granted 12 patents.