Mice Fall Short as Test Subjects for Humans’ Deadly Ills

cp418

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/science/testing-of-some-deadly-diseases-on-mice-mislead-report-says.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

Paper Reveals Need To Use Human Cells In Drug Studies.

The New York Times (2/12, A19, Kolata, Subscription Publication) reports that a "game changing" paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences helped scientists understand that it was misleading to test drugs used to treat human sepsis, burns, and trauma on mice. A ten-year study of accumulated data revealed that the genetic response to the drugs differed between mice and humans, so that a medicine that worked for mice could be deadly for human patients. Paper co-author Dr. Ronald W. Davis, a genomics expert at Stanford University, said researchers had grown accustomed to using mice in their studies and needed to question whether humans would respond to drugs in the same way.

SelenaWolf

I'm sorry, but this made me howl.  I mean, they are just now starting to consider that mice may react differently to various compounds that humans do?  Yeesh.

wallycat

Same for the fat-phobias. All the cholesterol info was gathered on rabbits.  Wow, really?  a vegetarian animal eating meat and fat might react differently?  UGH!

jenrio

i'm not surprised but still, how else could they better test thousands of new drugs?    are you going to test it on our more closely evolutionarily related cousins?   There are ethical concerns as well as practical concerns.   

Are you going to engineer closer model of human system by transgenic engineering?   Again, There are ethical concerns as well as practical concerns.  

Are you going to use 3D cell models?   How could you model all the different microenvironment of brain/liver/lung as well immune system?  How could you evaluate side effects and unexpected consequences?

Are you going to ask early stagers and BCo members to clinical trial every half baked drug candidates?   Wait for law suits.

Curing cancer is a great challenge.  The researchers dedicated their lives towards experimenting, understanding, digging ever deeper into the mystery and perhaps into the light.    

I'm just in awe of these people and the difficulty they encountered and will continue to encounter in their journey.   

gpawelski

It seemed that Robert A. Weinberg, Director of the MIT Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, alluded to the same thing Gina Kolata wrote about in her article, several years ago in an article he wrote about human cancer biology. I believe it may have been his "The Biology of Cancer" (Garland Science). Odd that it took so long to catch on!

In general, the problem with these experiments is that they are usually done on SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency) mice - aka, mice with ZERO immune system. SCID mice are routinely used as model organisms for research into the basic biology of the immune system, cell transplatation strategies and the effects of disease on mammalian systems.

They also use nude mice, which don't have a thymus (and therefore no T cells). T cells mature in the thymus. They do this to eliminate the potential for rejection. T cells or T lymphocytes belong to a group of white blood cells known as lymphocytes and play a central role in cell-mediated immunity.