Why are the pens full at the National Swine Resource and Research Center (NSRRC) at the University of Missouri? Because the pig is an excellent model of human disease and unfortunately, the need is high to better understand the myriad of diseases facing humans today.
“The NSRRC has been very popular,” Randall Prather, Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the Animal Sciences Research Center at the University of Missouri, told AgriTalk’s Chip Flory. “We’ve filled up our highest biosecurity facility with pigs. We don’t have another extra pen for pigs to stand in.”
NSRRC is the go-to source for genetically modified pigs used by researchers across the U.S. to study various diseases that impact humans, the University of Missouri said in a release.
Breaking Ground
In an attempt to build on the success of the facility, MU applied to the National Institutes of Health for additional funding to basically double the size of the high biosecurity facility. Although they won’t break ground until February 24, Prather said they are very excited to be able to have that new space to meet the needs of biomedical investigators.
NSRRC undertakes projects for things that have failed in studies with mice but are much better suited for pigs.
“A lot of what we do is create genetic models of human disease. For example, we have pigs that get cystic fibrosis,” Prather said. “Why is that important? Because you can take that same mutation that occurs in people and put it in other species like mice, and they get no symptoms of cystic fibrosis. The only way you can go in invasively and monitor development and progression of disease is to create a pig that gets that disease that you can then work on.”
A great amount of their work is done in collaboration with Mike Welsh and David Stoltz at University of Iowa where they run a large cystic fibrosis program.
“Mike and David both came and visited a year or so ago and took the lab out to lunch,” Prather recalled.
At the end of lunch, they stood up and said, ‘You guys have no idea how you working on microscope, how you working with cells, how you working with pigs, has improved the quality of life of my patients.”
The NSRRC team makes pig models to study many diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
The Model Pig
There are many reasons why pigs make a great model, Prather explained. Pigs are similar in size to humans. Genetically, they’re quite similar to humans.
“Other things that we’re trying to do is make pigs with defective outflow tracks from their heart. Well, why would you want to do that? Well, number one, we want to study heart development. But number two, we want something for surgeons to have a chance to practice on before they actually go into a human infant,” he said.
“That’s fantastic work as you think about the lives that you’re impacting with the work that you are doing with pigs there at the center,” Flory said. “It’s absolutely incredible.”
Read more:
$8-Million Grant Will Expand National Swine Resource and Research Center at MU
Genus and The Roslin Institute Team Up to Produce PRRS-Resistant Pigs
Gene Editing: Experts Say it’s Time to Remodel Regulatory Landscape
