Genetically Engineered Pig Models for Human Diseases

Abstract

Although pigs are used widely as models of human disease, their utility as models has been enhanced by genetic engineering. Initially, transgenes were added randomly to the genome, but with the application of homologous recombination, zinc finger nucleases, and transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN) technologies, now most any genetic change that can be envisioned can be completed. To date these genetic modifications have resulted in animals that have the potential to provide new insights into human diseases for which a good animal model did not exist previously. These new animal models should provide the preclinical data for treatments that are developed for diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, retinitis pigmentosa, spinal muscular atrophy, diabetes, and organ failure. These new models will help to uncover aspects and treatments of these diseases that were otherwise unattainable. The focus of this review is to describe genetically engineered pigs that have resulted in models of human diseases.

Juvenile Swine Surgical Alveolar Cleft Model to Test Novel Autologous Stem Cell Therapies

“…22 This correlation allows for timed interventions in a swine model that correspond to wellcharacterized ages for treatment in humans. 23 Finally, recent completion of the pig genome project 24 is facilitating the development of human disease models in swine that are currently only found in mice 25 ; consequently, development of swine surgical models will be a key step in initiating translational studies that address human conditions. To our knowledge, swine alveolar cleft models are reported in only three publications, 18,19,26 with a single report of a maxillary model to assess bone resorption after onlay bone grafting.…”

Isolation and Differentiation of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells from Porcine Subcutaneous Adipose Tissues

“…Therefore, the significance of employing pigs to isolate ADSC in this protocol is to yield a large quantity of high quality adult stem cells. The pig is a useful animal model representing humans because of the comparable organ size and many physiological and biochemical similarities between the species [27][28][29][30] . Acquiring hADSC from commercial companies is expensive and in many cases the cells have been manipulated, passaged or cryopreserved.…”

Generation of human organs in pigs via interspecies blastocyst complementation

“…Pig genome has been recently sequenced (Groenen et al, 2012), and SCNT is also available in the pig (Park et al, 2001;Lai 2002), which have made the pig one of the most popular large animal models in biomedical research (Prather, Lorson, Ross, Whyte, & Walters, 2013).…”