Research labs have an environmental waste problem. While inhabiting buildings with similar footprints to traditional businesses, labs generate far more waste. They use 10x the energy of a traditional office, use 4x as much water, and ultimately generate over five billion pounds of plastic waste each year.
These are exciting times for swine research and its possibilities for translational biomedical research. Every year, major breakthroughs involving pigs are announced, such as a recent “OrganEx” study out of Yale, aimed at improving the long-term viability of donor organs.
At Animal Biotech Industries, we’re always excited to hear about new applications of porcine tissues in human medicine – such as a recent study published in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Decellularization and Characterization of Porcine Pleura as Bioscaffolds in Tissue Engineering.
One of the long-time dreams of medical science is to help people naturally regenerate organs, or even limbs – and thanks to porcine tissues, we may be one small step closer to that goal!
The road toward xenotransplantation, and particularly kidney xenotransplantation, has been rocky, but a new study from Nature Communications shows real promise: consistent transplants of swine kidneys into baboons, with positive long-term survival rates, and using only conventional anti-rejection strategies.
A remarkable experiment published in 2022 described an entirely novel way of curing blindness in people suffering from keratoconus, a condition caused by thinning in the cornea. They did this using nothing but rendered pig’s skin. The results were extremely positive and pointed towards the potential of using swine collagen as an alternative to expensive surgery for corneal implants.
Pigs are also easily bred, and their post-mortem tissue can be used in numerous ways to improve human health research. Now it seems that their jaws and teeth have also made the cut.
In March of 2024, a new milestone in organ transplantation was achieved: 62-year-old Richard Slayman, who had been suffering acute liver failure and living on dialysis for over a decade, became the first recipient of a pig kidney transplant. Shortly after that, in April, 54-year-old Lisa Pisano became the second recipient of a porcine kidney.
For proxy studies into the immune system, swine are proving to be one of the most reliable sources of data. Their immune system is quite similar to human immune systems in many ways, allowing for a wide range of useful research that continues to help save lives!
Porcine hearts are helping to save lives! One of the most exciting areas of cardiac research focuses on the use of swine hearts to research, or
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, an essential ‘building block’ that holds our bodies together. Collagen is found in nearly all major tissues and organs in the body and is particularly important for its role in making up connective tissues such as skin, bones, muscles, and cartilage.
After decades of ethical and exceptional service, we are preparing for an even brighter future under the leadership of our CEO, Deborah Shepherd. Read on to learn more about our leadership, company best practices, and the exciting developments on the horizon for our innovative woman-owned organization.
