Porcogen, Sunmax’s pig-based collagen for bioprinting

Produced by Sunmax, a Taiwanese collagen materials specialist, Porcogen is a sterile purified collagen solution specifically formulated to be a bioink in bioprinting processes. It contains stable collagen protein with a native triple-helical structure for medical device, tissue engineering and research purpose.

Founded in 2001, with technology out of the benchmarking collagen experts from United States, Sunmax has grown over the years into a highly recognized, public-listed biomedical company in Taiwan. Its capabilities include the development, manufacturing of market high standard collagen-based medical devices.

Collagen is a key material for all bioprinting. Biomaterials made using collagen have been successfully used as a 3D substrate for cell culture and are considered optimal scaffolds for creating artificial tissues. Cells can either grow inside the pores of such engineered scaffolds or directly within naturally derived fibrous material such as collagen, or laminin.

An important task that arises for engineering such materials is the simulation of physical and morphological properties of tissues, which must be restored or replaced. Collagen bioprinting can be applied to address these issues

Specifically, Porcogen is a material derived from SPF (Specific Pathogen Free ) porcine hide to eliminate risk of BSE (mad cow disease). It features a high purity standard of near 99% collagen content SDS-PAGE, with an intact triple-helical structure which allows wide variety of applications due to its bioactive functionality. The US FDA has listed Porcogen in the Device Master File. Master Access File number is MAF 2571.