On the farm of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICiG) in Novosibirsk, about 120 mini-pigs, bred specifically for experimental scientific and medical tasks, live. Such pigs should have body weight and organ sizes close to human, as well as thin skin and a small layer of fat. This was told socialbites.ca by the head of work with mini pigs, senior researcher of the FRC ICG SB RAS, candidate of biological sciences Sergey Nikitin.
“Different operations require different pigs. People also differ in age, height and weight, so we try to have the full scale – small, medium and large. Also, only meat-type pigs are suitable for medical tasks. They should not be fatty. How can we remove such a layer of fat? “Can you imagine breaking it? Liposuction is easier,” she explained.
Minipigs with a body weight of 40 to 60 kg are used for the experiments. Nikitin added that they were sent from the farm to research centers where future operations and procedures are carried out on humans and the safety and efficacy of products planned to be implanted in humans are tested. .
For more information on what experiments have been conducted on pigs and how promising it is to develop donor organs for humans in pigs, see Supplementary Information. material “socialbites.ca”.