Rodent of the Week: The demise of the lab rat?
It's enough to send shivers down the spine of our little guy to the left. A leading microbiologist and immunologist is urging his peers in medical research to start weaning themselves from using experimental rodents in the lab and turn to a more contemporary model of research. The good old lab rat, says Stanford immunologist Mark Davis, can teach us only so much.
"We seem to be in a state of denial, where there is so much invested in the mouse model that it seems almost unthinkable to look elsewhere," wrote Davis in the current issue of the journal Immunity.
Lab rodents have been the primary tool for learning about mammalian physiology, including immune system function. Though they often supply quick answers, Davis wrote, researchers should not depend on rats to tell them everything about human health. He noted that many clinical trials in humans have not produced the expected results that were first seen in lab mice. Davis proposes that researchers form a national or international infrastructure to collect and save human blood and tissue samples where immunological data could be gathered and lodged in a database. This kind of program could speed the pace of discoveries in immunology without lab rats.
"We can't depend on the mouse for all the answers, because in some cases it's not giving us the right answers," Davis wrote. "But think about what we can do with people. People come to hospitals, get vaccinations, give blood and tissue samples for routine lab tests and clinical trials. We're not learning nearly as much as we could from these samples."
-- Shari Roan
Photo credit: Advanced Cell Technology Inc.
