Services
Pig Studies
Interested in Pig Studies?
The BTI team has ample experience establishing pig models of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and infections caused by enteric or respiratory pathogens. As opposed to mice, pigs offer a physiological composition more comparable to humans. Their mucosal immune system is an ideal model for studying the complexity of the human immune system and how it responds to inflammation, infection and injury. Preclinical studies using pigs lay the groundwork for an informed design of human clinical trials.
Our BTI facilities and animals:
- Internal Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
- AAALAC-accredited swine facility
- Biosafety level 1 (ABSL1) and ABSL2 studies
- 16 independent experimental housing rooms, each with eight-pig capacity
- Fully equipped surgical room for onsite collection of specimens
- Superior husbandry for pigs spanning all ages of the life cycle
- Gnobiotic swine litters available
- On-site veterinarians
- Routine procedures: weights, fecal samples, venipuncture, injections, immunizations, orogastric infections and intubation
Active monitoring post-challenge is performed to ensure the well-being of the animals and provide an assessment of disease activity progression throughout the duration of the experiment. Peripheral blood collection is performed on a regular basis as a means of analyzing the time course of an infection. Execution of specific expected goals is met with superior efficiency in a timely manner while maintaining detailed attention to our animals and data.
What BTI can offer
BTI can offer pig projects with the following disease models:
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- Neonatal models
- Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC) infection
- Helicobacter pylori infection
- Clostridium difficile infection
- Influenza Virus infection
Contact us today and set up a session with our immunology experts.
For additional information concerning BTI’s full range of animal model services, click here.
