A Taiwan research team has successfully extracted collagen from porcine lungs, allowing waste to be turned into useful material, Taipei’s Chinese Culture University (PCCU) said Nov. 28.
Widely used in cosmetics production and plastic surgeries, collagen is usually drawn from animal byproducts such as pig skin, cowhide or fish skin, according to Lin Yung-kai, an associate professor at PCCU’s Department of Animal Science.
Lin’s biomaterials research team managed to extract 6.7 grams of collagen out of 1 kilogram of porcine lung.
“More than 6 million pigs are slaughtered in Taiwan every year,” Lin said. “While the lungs of these pigs have traditionally been made into fish feed or thrown away, our new technique enables us to turn this waste into valuable materials.”
Lin and his team have written up their findings in a paper scheduled to be published by the international journal Food Chemistry in February 2011. (KL-HZW)