Fire Destroys Lab, Kills 700 Hogs, Ends Years Of Research On Diseases Wisconsin Blaze Devastating To Anti-Cholesterol Studies

A fire that killed 700 pigs at a University of Wisconsin laboratory has brought to an abrupt halt years of research with implications for human ailments such as heart disease and arthritis.

Three herds of carefully bred research animals that also were used in studies of organ transplants, nutrition and bone development were lost last Wednesday when the fire swept through the Swine Research Center on a 2,000-acre farm 20 miles north of the main campus in Madison.

The cause of the fire is being investigated. University officials said no employees were at the center at the time. A neighboring farmer first reported the blaze.

The swine center was built in 1984 as a state-of-the-art research laboratory, one of the largest of its kind in the country.

The financial loss of the building is estimated at $5.3 million, said Bob Steele, associate dean of research at the University of Wisconsin’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

“But you can’t really put a price on those animals,” he said. “They’re not market hogs.”

Research data also were destroyed.

Increasingly, medical advances originate with animal science, said Roger Wyse, dean of the college. “There’s really not much difference between agricultural research and medical research anymore.”

Research at the swine center has led to development of several anti-cholesterol drugs and new techniques in angioplasty, a method of repairing blocked blood vessels by using tiny inflatable balloons at the end of a catheter inserted into the vessels.

Similarities in physiology between the hearts of humans and pigs make swine ideal models for studying the human vascular system.

The fire was particularly devastating to a university geneticist, Dr. Jan Rapacz, who has spent 28 years crossbreeding swine, looking for a hereditary link to the production of cholesterol.

Through his crossbreeding program, Rapacz developed research animals with a genetic predisposition for atherosclerosis, a thickening of the walls of arteries which is one of the leading causes of heart attacks.