On Oct. 25, 2022, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that the University of Missouri (MU) had been awarded $8 million to expand the research facility on MU’s campus to keep up with increasing demand for their expertise and speed up the scientific discoveries that can help treat humans who are suffering from the same diseases shown in the genetically modified pigs. In total, the NSRRC has made more than 90 different genetic modifications in pigs to study different diseases.

The NSRRC has received funding from the NIH for 20 years, and Prather has been at MU for 33 years. With requests for genetically modified pigs constantly coming in from researchers at universities all over the country, including University of California-Los Angeles, Harvard, Duke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louisiana State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Indiana, the current facility has maxed out its capacity. Construction on the expanded facility, which will have extremely high biosecurity protocols to ensure, for example, safe transfer of organs from pigs to humans and nonhuman primates, is expected to begin in February 2024 and be completed by summer 2025.

While the NSRRC is mainly focused on biomedical research, Prather’s research also has agricultural applications, such as making pigs that are resistant to certain diseases, which has implications for both agriculture and human medicine.