“Where Farm and Family Meet”
Selling health: Harvesting swine tissue for human benefit By DICK HAGEN The Land Staff Writer Get into a conversation with Dave Theis and you quickly realize pig cells can be the future of healthier swine and also healthier people. Dave and his wife, Terry, operate Midwest Research Swine with a special laboratory facility, Midwest Porcine Recovery at Glencoe, Minn. Once upon a time this husband-wife team were pig farmers in the Gibbon, Minn., area. In fact they still maintain a swine herd on their farm. But it’s the story, constantly unfolding, at Midwest Research Swine, that grabs your attention. Like Theis simply said, “I sell health.” In much abbreviated terms, this outfit collects swine tissue for biomedical uses from four specially selected swine producers. This tissue becomes the raw material for major medical providers dealing in the multi-million dollar industry of new technologies to enhance human health.
Dave Theis and his wife, Terry, manage and operate Midwest Porcine Recovery, Midwest Research Swine and MRS Pork at Glencoe, Minn.
Dick Hagen
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THE LAND, OCTOBER 11, 2013
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Decellularization means removing all the cells. Theis tells of work by University of Minnesota researchers where they “flushed out” the heart of a dead rat, meaning removing all the cells within this
This technology
heart. Then they is what will be implanted cells of a solving the live rat into the dead rejection chalheart and six weeks later it was functionlenges of variing. In essence these ous organ implanted cells reprotransplants, duced and grew including another heart. hearts, because “This technology is medical specialwhat will be solving ists will be the rejection challenges of various using a organ transplants, patient’s own including hearts, cells. because medical specialists will be using — Dave Theis a patient’s own cells,” Theis said, indicating this is cutting-edge technology. Admitting to being a few pounds overweight, he visualizes his local doctor telling him, “Dave, in six months you’ve got to have a bypass.” As Theis said, this means ripping veins out of his legs and transplanting them back into his body in his heart cavity. Instead Theis tells this doctor, “Hey just a minute. I can go to my pig factory, get some pig veins, remove all the cells from those veins, then reimplant these with vascular cells from my own body and within six months I’ll have normally functioning blood vessels and you haven’t had to cut into my body.” His firm is also providing tissue for porcine surgical mesh implants. He said they had just harvested eight porcine livers for a company that is working to produce a surgical mesh to repair hernia issues. He indicated this project will be four to five years down the road. Theis describes their work as mostly being See TISSUE, pg. 11A