Member Spotlight: Sustainable Swine Resources

SSR (Sustainable Swine Resources) is committed to creating sustainable partnerships with life science companies and researchers to provide high-quality, reliable porcine materials for use in improving, prolonging, and saving lives.

Pigs play an important role in the overall health and wellness of millions of people around the world. While harvesting pigs for food is a commonly known practice, what many people might not know is the benefit of utilizing porcine materials in other ways that improve animal and human health.

“SSR (Sustainable Swine Resources) is committed to creating sustainable partnerships with life science companies and researchers to provide high-quality, reliable porcine materials for use in improving, prolonging and saving lives. At SSR, we begin with an understanding of our customers’ needs,” said Dr. Lauren Sammel, Director at SSR.

Pigs have had a wide use in the medical field due to their similarities with humans. Porcine organs are very similar to our own, and their internal systems are alike as well. Since pigs are omnivores like us, their organs function in a comparable manner to human organs, and pigs can also experience some of the same medical issues we do. Because of these striking similarities, porcine tissues are used in medical devices to treat various injuries or conditions in human beings.

“Today we have multiple partnerships where our tissues are the starting materials for medical device manufactures focused on wound healing.” Sammel said, adding, “We also are focused on opportunities to provide components essential for cell growth.”

Johnsonville Sausage, the parent company of the SSR division, has been both a sponsor and industry advisor to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the development of their new Meat Science & Animal Biologics Discovery facility and program. The program will bring together Animal and Meat Science and leverage the wealth of multi-disciplinary expertise found across the campus, including Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. The program aims to discover new uses for animal components in enhancing animal and human health, develop experienced, critical-thinking meat industry leaders and provide objective expertise for educating students, scientists and society in wholesome foods derived from animals.

“Our connection to Johnsonville supports our strong commitment to the well-being of our animals with ethical and humane practices, as well as our dedication to the sustainable use of the animals,” she continued, “Johnsonville has been in business for more than 70 years, and along with SSR, is headquartered in Wisconsin.  SSR, is the largest U.S. supplier of sow tissue with extensive capabilities to procure other porcine animals and materials.”

 “We utilize our deep expertise in working with porcine materials to design a process for delivering optimal materials for commercial or research use in biomedical devices, pharmaceuticals, regenerative medicine and tissue fabrication. We provide customized materials and support innovative research programs that result in lasting partnerships,” said Sammel.

 “We have a strong willingness to explore joint ventures and/or business partnerships aimed at advancing life-science innovations.  SSR is closely linked with MSAB Capital, the investment arm of Johnsonville that invests in seed and early stage companies in life sciences and emerging technologies,” she continued.

SSR Lifesciences derives excellent porcine materials for development of many high-quality medical products. “We can source, prepare and deliver customized items in large volumes according to client specifications. From medical training, R&D, pharmaceuticals and medical device development, SSR Lifesciences can partner with you for your research or commercial needs,” said Sammel.

“We are excited to join ARMI and support the mission to make practical the large-scale manufacturing of engineered tissues and tissue related technologies.  Porcine tissues play an important role in medical devices and therapies and with more research and innovation; there will be greater positive patient outcomes with porcine tissues.  We at SSR are driven to learn and explore technologies for improving human lives,”

Regenerative medicine provides tremendous opportunity to shape the future of medicine and SSR wants to affect this change.  “We welcome the opportunity to learn more about ARMI members and discuss further, how we can work together on common strategic objectives,” Sammel concluded.

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