Pork for transplantologists
US pork producer to grow human transplants
Smithfield Foods, a major supplier of packaged meat products and pork producer in the United States, has won an $80 million grant from the US Department of Defense to research and create tissues and organs suitable for human transplantation. This is reported by Reuters.
The company plans to decellularize pig organs (replace animal cells with human ones) and sell them to medical institutions. Smithfield Foods has already agreed on supplies with two legal entities. The names of the customers were not disclosed.
"We want to convey to the medical and scientific communities that this area is interesting to us. We are not just packers," Courtney Stanton, vice president of biological research at Smithfield, told Reuters. She noted the huge potential of the direction. According to Stanton, only the market of xenogenic materials (cartilage, animal bones), which are used in medicine and for other non-food purposes, is estimated at $100 billion.
In addition to Smithfield Foods, grants from the ministry for similar projects were received by the Deka Research Corporation, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the University of New Hampshire, the American chemical and pharmaceutical corporation Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer of medical equipment Medtronic and the medical corporation United Therapeutics Corp.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
18.04.2017