Public concern about swine flu has prompted Living Cell Technologies (LCT) to order extra tests on the pigs it hopes to use in a trial to treat diabetics, but the biotechnology company expects the animals will get the all-clear.
The chief executive of the Auckland-based company, Paul Tan, said yesterday he hoped the flu outbreak would not affect the company's application for approval for a trial using xenotransplantation in eight people with type 1 diabetes.
"I hope that a rational environment prevails."
Dr Tan said the Ministry of Agriculture had advised it was not necessary to specially test the pigs, as it was "relaxed" about them, but LCT wanted them tested to give " extra reassurance".
The company is hoping to hear soon whether it has final Government approval for the trial, which was given conditional approval last October by former health minister David Cunliffe.
While concerns about the possibility of porcine endogenous retrovirus infecting humans halted an earlier trial in 1996, Dr Tan said viral infections from pigs to humans had never resulted from pig tissue implanted into humans.
In the recent Mexican swine flu outbreak, it was important to note there was not yet evidence the illness had resulted from direct pig-human contact.
LCT has special herds in Kumeu and Invercargill which have been bred from pigs isolated on the Auckland Islands for about 200 years, resulting in pigs which are comparatively free of viruses.
They are also housed in bird-proof facilities.
Dr Tan said regular testing of the herds showed no swine influenza and an outbreak of flu was more likely to occur in nature than in a regulated pig facility.
New Zealand pigs generally were free of the disease, due to a combination of geographic isolation and biosecurity practices.
The trial will take islet cells from a pig pancreas coated with seaweed gel and implant them into the abdomen of the patients in the hope it will promote the manufacture of insulin.
Early in May, the international peer reviewer looking at the trial as a condition of Mr Cunliffe's approval, and who sought extra safety information, is expected to report to the Ministry of Health after considering LCT's responses.
An ongoing trial in Russia involving seven patients has shown promising results.
