The only FDA-cleared large animal cancer model, engineered to behave like a patient - so drugs and devices fail earlier, cheaper, and honestly.
In a lab in Urbana, Illinois, a pig is doing something a mouse never could: getting sick in the same way you might.
Not by accident. By design. This is an Oncopig - a domestic pig edited to carry two of the most common mutations in human cancer, waiting for a signal that will switch a tumor on at a precise spot, in a precise cell type, on a precise day. The company that raises it, ships it, and turns it into predictive data is Sus Clinicals, Inc. - named, with a scientist's straight face, after Sus scrofa, the humble pig.
The pitch is deceptively simple. Somewhere between the mouse that is too small and too different, and the human trial that is too expensive and too final, sits a gap where good cancer drugs go to die on bad information. Sus Clinicals decided to fill that gap with an animal that already shares our anatomy, physiology, and scale - and then gave it our cancer.
Caption: A pig the size of a person, carrying the mutations of a patient. The resemblance is the whole point.
Here is an uncomfortable fact about cancer research: most therapies that cure mice never cure people. The mouse is cheap and quick and endlessly studied, but it is also small, short-lived, and biologically distant. A tumor that melts in a rodent can shrug off the same drug in a human body that is a thousand times larger and wired differently.
Pigs are a different proposition. They share our anatomy, our physiology, our immunology, and much of our genetics. Crucially, like us, they need several genetic changes before cancer takes hold - not the single flick a mouse often requires. And because a pig is roughly human-scale, a researcher can run the exact same CT scanner, the same catheter, the same surgical device on an Oncopig that they would use on a patient.
"The Oncopig harbors mutations found in more than 50% of human cancers, and results in tumors that recapitulate the phenotype and physiology of human cancers."
KRAS-G12D and TP53-R167H built into the pig genome - dormant until triggered.
A signal switches on a tumor at a chosen site and cell type, on demand.
Drugs, devices, and diagnostics run against human-scale, human-like tumors.
Histology, imaging, and pathology turn the study into predictive data.
Comorbidities can be induced too - so a study can mimic the messy, real bodies drugs actually meet.
The genetically engineered pig itself - inducible, site-specific tumors that mirror human disease. The FDA-cleared centerpiece.
Live animals shipped to your facility for in-house studies. Litters roughly every 5 weeks, shipping near 8 weeks of age.
In-house digitized slides, IHC staining, antibody validation, and expert pathological interpretation.
FFPE tumor and tissue blocks, plus fresh, frozen, and liquid samples and cell lines for in vitro work - skip growing your own.
End-to-end drug, device, and diagnostic testing delivered through a network of preferred CRO partners in the US and Europe.
A P&G-trained dealmaker and a University of Illinois geneticist walked out of an academic lab with a licensed patent and a plan. The team splits its work across three cities - R&D in Chicago, labs in Urbana, commercial operations in Cincinnati.
Caption: Dr. Schook led the University of Illinois team that first built the Oncopig. Now the license is the company's, and the pig has a job.
Origin of the Oncopig science and exclusive global licensor of the IP.
Delivers Oncopig-based research services across Europe.
CBSET, IBEX, NAMSA, MED Institute, and Veranex run full preclinical studies on the platform.
Mass General Hospital, ABK Biomedical, University of Wisconsin, TriSalus Life Sciences, and UCLA.
Sus Clinicals publishes explainers and model walkthroughs on its channels. Start with the Oncopig overview, then dig into the platform.
Return to that lab in Urbana. The pig is still there, still doing what a mouse never could. But now the picture is fuller: the tumor it carries was switched on for a reason, its tissue is bound for a freezer that other labs will draw from, and the imaging around it is the same a hospital would use on a patient down the road.
That is the quiet trick of Sus Clinicals. It didn't invent a new creature or promise a cure. It took an animal we've lived alongside for millennia, gave it our disease, and handed drug developers a more honest place to fail - so that fewer people have to.
Caption: Same pig, same lab. What changed is what we can learn from it before a drug ever reaches a person.