(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Laboratory mice have played a huge rule in many of
medicines most important breakthroughs. But a new era may be dawning in the
world of lab research, one that may mean fewer mice and more humans.
Immunologist Mark Davis, Ph.D., a researcher at Stanford University, says the
time has come for immunologists to start weaning themselves off of experimental
rodents and to embark on bolder research of the causes and treatments of
human-specific diseases.
"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," Dr. Davis,
writes in his essay published in the journal Immunity.
He calls for the current mouse-centered, small-laboratory approach to be
supplemented by a broad industrial-scale "systems biology" approach like the one
that unraveled the human genome.
In
his essay, Dr. Davis explains that humans and rodents are separated by some 65
million years of evolutionary divergence from a common ancestor. This makes for
vast differences that are usually noted once research moves beyond rodent
testing and into human models. Also, humans are exposed to an array of elements
in their daily lives, that a lab mouse will never come in contact with, meaning
mouse conditions will never accurately mirror human conditions.
"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. As
with the recent history of human genetics, we could be much bolder," Dr. Davis
was quoted as saying.
Dr. Davis says he sees a need for a national or international infrastructure to
capture information from human blood and tissue samples.
SOURCE: Immunity, 2009
