Nine-year-old Mila Lambert has a rare genetic condition that once caused her excruciating bouts of stomach pain.
"The pain was full-on agony. There was not much you could do about it," she says.
Mila's pain was caused by the slow disintegration of her pancreas. Her mum Courtney made the difficult decision to have the organ removed last September.
"The pancreas basically digests itself when you've got this gene," Courtney says.
"By the time we were heading into surgery, Mila's had almost entirely digested itself. There was only five per cent left."
The pancreas plays a crucial role in the body. It produces the hormone insulin, which regulates the amount of glucose - or sugar - in the bloodstream. If blood glucose levels aren't properly regulated, it can lead to diabetes, kidney disease and even brain damage.
But, amid a worldwide shortage of transplants, suitable organ donations such as a pancreas can be extremely hard to come by.
Paediatric surgeon Dr Gordon Thomas said one way around this was an uncommon procedure, in which insulin-producing cells from Mila's pancreas were isolated and transplanted into her liver instead.
Mila was hospitalised last September in excruciating pain. Her entire pancreas was removed. Credit: Supplied.
"Going from extensive pain medication, not being able to go to school — to now living a more normal life."
This kind of transplant procedure has been done less than 10 times in Australian children, Dr Thomas said.
"Worldwide, there's not many places that do it."
Courtney Lambert and her daughter Mila. Mila had her pancreas removed in September 2021. Source: SBS News / Stefan Armbruster.
Since receiving the pancreas cell transplant, Mila no longer experienced crippling bouts of pain and was free to resume hobbies such as rollerblading.
Organ donations dropping
The scarcity of donated organs is an issue across the globe and has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One study, looking at countries in Europe and South America, found kidney, liver, lung and heart transplants dropped by more than 30 per cent in 2021.
Professor Wayne Hawethorne runs a cutting-edge transplant research lab at Westmead Hospital in Sydney.
"There's very, very few organ donors," he said.
"Last year there were 1,850 patients on our waiting lists all around Australia for transplants, but only 300 organ donors.
"There's this huge differential between the number of organ donors and recipients."
One promising solution, Professor Hawethorne said, was a medical technology called xenotransplantation.
Xenotransplantantion uses animal tissues to treat human diseases. The animal cells are first genetically-modified so they are safe for the body and aren't rejected following the transplant.
Perhaps the most prominent example came from the United States earlier this year when David Bennett survived for two months after receiving a pig heart transplant.
Researchers such as Professor Hawthorne have also been looking at using animal tissues to treat diabetes and kidney disease.
"There's millions of patients around the world that could benefit from xenotransplantation," Professor Hawthorne said.
Pigs are commonly used for xenotransplants because they are not endangered, they grow quickly, and their organs are of a similar size to humans.
One of the biggest hurdles for xenotransplantation is public acceptance.
Ethical concerns have been raised - particularly around animal welfare - as well as questions from a religious perspective.
David Bennett, left, survived for two months after receiving a pig heart transplant in the United States. Credit: University of Maryland.
"I can say that the mainstream view of religious scholars is that it’s possible to use pig parts as long as we don’t have any alternative available," he told .
"We have an Islamic ruling that says something forbidden can become permissible if there’s a medical necessity.
"After all, saving a human life is viewed as a very noble gesture in Islam."
Professor Hawthorne said fears about xenotransplantation could be overcome, particularly as the safety and therapeutic benefit was demonstrated.
"We've set a whole series of guidelines to protect the patient, their families and the general public," he said.
Professor Hawthorne said animal tissues had already been used in some aspects of modern medicine for years.
Pancreases harvested from pigs and cows were commonly used to produce insulin until synthetic methods were developed in the 1980s. Heart valves from pigs have been transplanted into humans for more than 30 years.
Australia lifted a five-year moratorium on xenotransplant research in 2010.
