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Immunodeficient Pigs for Biomedical Research
Category(s):
For Information, Contact:
OIC Commercialization Team
515-294-4740
licensing@iastate.edu
Web Published:
5/5/2015
ISURF #
3992
Summary:
Iowa State University researchers have identified pigs that have a severely impaired immune system that could serve as important biomedical model for the study of immune system and other diseases in humans.

Development Stage:
Matings that produced the affected pigs have been repeated and all litters have been confirmed to have at least one affected pig; genotyping analysis is in process.  ISU is seeking commercialization partners for these valuable research animals.

Description:
Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is a genetic defect that causes newborn animals to lack T or B cells in circulation and to have few or no lymphocytes in their primary or secondary lymphoid tissues.  SCID has been shown to have an autosomal recessive pattern of inheritance in certain mouse strains as well as in horses, some dog breeds, and humans, but is perhaps best known as the ‘bubble boy’ disease, which is an X-linked version of SCID in humans.  Affected neonates do not show clinical manifestations of the defect while suckling.  However, as maternal antibody wanes, the animals become susceptible to opportunistic infections to which they inexorably succumb. ISU researchers and their colleagues at Kansas State University have recently identified a SCID-like syndrome in a line of pigs originally bred for traits related to feed efficiency.  Because of the closer physiological resemblance between humans and pigs, these animals may have utility as a biomedical model for SCID and immunodeficiency diseases in humans that is more suitable than the current mouse models.  In addition, the anatomical and physiological similarities between humans and pigs would make these SCID pigs a superior biomedical model for research into cell and tissue transplantation, cancer research and efficacy of chemotherapeutics, as well as for testing new vaccines.

Group:
This technology is related to ISURF 4044: Genetic Basis and Test for Severe Combined Immune Deficiency in Pigs and related patent(s).

Advantage:
• More clinically relevant model for investigation of human immunodeficiency, cancer, and other diseases
Application:
Biomedical research
Patent Information:
*To see the full version of the patent(s), follow the link below, then click on "Images" button.


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