MPI Research is pleased to announce that Theodore Baird, Ph.D. will be speaking at the upcoming American College Of Toxicology meeting in Palm Springs, California. As a part of the Safety Pharmacology symposium on Tuesday, November 9, Dr. Baird will be discussing the use of swine as an alternate model applicable to cardiovascular safety evaluation of human pharmaceuticals. The presentation will focus primarily on MPI Research’s experience in implementation and validation of a cardiovascular telemetry model in miniature swine.

A variety of disease/efficacy models in swine have proliferated over the past several decades, commensurate with increasing recognition of the high degree of anatomical, physiological, and pathophysiological comparability between the pig and human species. Miniature swine currently have a widening use not only in basic research, but also in some aspects of safety assessment such as dermal and general toxicology testing. Nevertheless, this species currently is not a standard species in routine, regulatory safety pharmacology evaluations. The cardiopulmonary system of swine is quite comparable to that of the human in terms of both structure and function. Consequently, various breeds of miniature swine are increasingly used as a large animal toxicology species, both of which explain the growing industry interest in this species for safety pharmacology testing. In 2001, a multinational pharmaceutical industry survey indicated that most laboratories routinely utilized the (beagle) dog and (cynomolgus) monkey for electrocardiographic safety evaluation, rather than swine. This routine use of beagles and primates may change in the future with increasing regulatory agency recognition of the suitability of swine in such research.

Dr. James Laveglia, Executive Vice President and Director of Research at MPI Research remarked, ”In recognition of the validity and reliability of swine as an emerging animal safety model, regulatory agencies such as ICH and FDA have recently supported the use of swine for multiple areas of drug safety testing, including cardiovascular safety. MPI Research has become a leader in the use of swine for many drug and device testing applications and we have recently expanded our facility to accommodate up to 1000 of this increasingly important preclinical species at any given time.”

MPI Research exists to provide comprehensive non-clinical research that meets the requirements of pharmaceutical, medical device, animal health and chemical companies as well as governmental agencies as we partner together to bring safer, healthier products to the world. MPI Research employees specialize in a wide variety of scientific disciplines including toxicology, pharmacology, metabolism, pathology, clinical pathology, reproductive and developmental biology, veterinary science, neuroscience, experimental therapeutics, immunotoxicology, analytical chemistry, computer science, regulatory science, and statistics.

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