Posts tagged animal models
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
This Robotic Mouse Was Designed to Stress Out Real Mice
Lab rats have a new companion, but it’s not friendly. Researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, have developed a robotic rat called WR-3 whose job is to induce stress and depression in lab animals, creating models of psychological conditions on which new drugs can be tested.
Animal are used throughout medicine as models to test treatments for human conditions, including mental disorders like depression. Rats and mice get their sense of smell severed to induce something like depression, or are forced to swim for long periods, for instance. Other methods rely on genetic modification and environmental stress, but none is entirely satisfactory in recreating a human-like version of depression for treatment. Hiroyuki Ishii and his team aim to do better with WR-3.
The researchers tested WR-3’s ability to depress two groups of 12 rats, measured by the somewhat crude assumption that a depressed rat moves around less. Rats in group A were constantly harassed by their robot counterpart, while the other rats were attacked intermittently and automatically by WR-3, whenever they moved. Ishii’s team found that the deepest depression was triggered by intermittent attacks on a mature rat that had been constantly harassed in its youth.
The team say they plan to test their new model of depression against more conventional systems, like forced swimming.
The robot has been developed just as new research by Junhee Seok of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues shows that the use of mouse models for human conditions has led researchers trying to find treatments for sepsis, burns and trauma astray at a cost of billions of tax dollars.
New research model to aid search for degenerative disease cures
Efforts to treat disorders like Lou Gehrig’s disease, Paget’s disease, inclusion body myopathy and dementiawill receive a considerable boost from a new research model created by UC Irvine scientists.
The team, led by pediatrician Dr. Virginia Kimonis, has developed a genetically modified mouse that exhibits many of the clinical features of human diseases largely triggered by mutations in the valosin-containing protein.
The mouse model will let researchers study how these now-incurable, degenerative disorders progress in vivo and will provide a platform for translational studies that could lead to lifesaving treatments.
“Currently, there are no effective therapies for VCP-associated diseases and related neurodegenerative disorders,” said Kimonis, a professor of pediatrics who specializes in genetics and metabolism. “This model will significantly spark new approaches to research directed toward the creation of novel treatment strategies.”
She and her team reported their discovery Sept. 28 online in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal.
The UCI researchers – from pediatrics, neurology, pathology and radiological sciences – specifically bred the first-ever “knock-in” mouse in which the normal VCP gene was substituted with one containing the common R155H mutation seen in humans with VCP-linked diseases. Subsequently, these mice exhibited the same muscle, brain and spinal cord pathology and bone abnormalities as these patients.
VCP is part of a system that maintains cell health by breaking down and clearing away old and damaged proteins that are no longer necessary. Mutations in the VCP gene disrupt the demolition process, and, as a result, excess and abnormal proteins may build up in muscle, bone and brain cells. These proteins form clumps that interfere with the cells’ normal functions and can lead to a range of disorders.
Another study carried out by members of this group – and published in August in the journal Cell Death & Disease – made use of these genetically altered mice to examine the development of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS. The researchers, led by Dr. Hong Yin and Dr. John Weiss in UCI’s Department of Neurology, documented slow, extensive pathological changes in the spinal cord remarkably similar to changes observed in other animal models of ALS as well as in human patients. ALS research is currently limited by a paucity of animal models in which disease processes can be studied.
Genetically modified mice have become important research models in the effort to cure human ailments. Mice bred to exhibit the brain pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, for example, have dramatically sped up the race to advance new treatments – one such model was developed at UCI. And many cancer therapies were created and tested using genetically altered mice.
(Source: today.uci.edu)