Wuzhishan pig

The Inbred Wuzhishan Pig (“WZSP”) is the result of almost 30 years of research by Professor Feng Shutang, formerly Research Fellow at the Beijing Institute of Animal Science and China's Academy of Agricultural Sciences.[1] It is a new breed of miniature pig that maybe used as a model animal for medical and life science research.

WZSP inbred identification was successfully conducted in early 2013 by the Chinese PLA General Hospital (Hospital No. 301) via in-kind and cross-transplant of skins. The full genome sequence and analysis was completed by BGI in 2012.[2] WZSP became China's first inbred large model animal where the developers maintain full independent intellectual property rights. The intellectual property rights for this novel model animal are protected by both Chinese patents[3] and a patent issued by the United States of America.[4] On May 18, 2015, China Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that its Institute of Animal Science had entered into an agreement to transfer the entirety of its research achievements and all relevant patents on WZSP to Beijing Grand Life Science & Technology Co., Ltd.,[5] which has the exclusive rights to breed and sell Wuzhishan pigs for commercial purposes.

On November 19, 2016, Beijing Grand Life Science & Technology Co., Ltd. successfully produced a litter of eight inbred piglets of F25 (the 25th generation), with an inbreeding coefficient of 0.995. The litter of four male and four female piglets demonstrated the stable capability of inbred WZSP fertility, another scientific milestone in the reproduction history of large animal inbreeding.

Over a dozen leading Chinese research institutions, medical schools, hospitals and enterprises have conducted or are conducting research into the Wuzhishan pigs with an aim to establish their suitability as surgical and disease research models.[6][7] Additional research on the future life science and medical applications of WZSP , have begun and the initial results include injection of embryonic germ cells into blastocysts,[8] and Islet isolation and purification.[9]

On June 23, 2017, the Academy of Military Medical Sciences of China and Grand Life Science jointly announced in "Study on Porcine endogenous retrovirus from Wuzhishan mini pig inbred and establishment of a new population without infectious PERV" that the PERV-pol gene-deficient WZSP have been identified and verified by systematic virology methods and whole genome sequencing,[10] and Grand Life has succeed in reproducing F0/F1 PERV-noninfectious WZSP herd that available for advanced biomedical research purposes,[11] including series of studies under the 2017-2020 National Primary Research Programs on Bio-material Development, Tissue-organ Repair and Xenotransplantation that commissioned by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.