Blog - Page 10 of 12 - BioMed21.org

Putting people first – human-relevant research for Parkinson’s disease

3 April 2019

World Parkinson’s Day (April 11th) aims to raise awareness of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the desperate need for effective new treatments. A recent review authored by members of the BioMed21 Collaboration identifies advances that could be implemented to better understand pathological processes, improve disease outcome, and reduce dependence on animal models. Many people may not be aware of how animals suffer in labs, used for research into Parkinson’s disease, when the answers we need may lie with patient-centred research and not animal testing.

For people, muscle tremors, or loss of fine control of movement, may be the first outward sign of Parkinson’s disease, but these motor symptoms are not the start. The death of dopamine-producing neurons in the brain ultimately cause the tremors, but the damage starts long before the tremors are apparent. Modelling this gradual loss of neurons is not possible in animals. Simulation of Parkinson’s disease in animals often uses injections of toxins directly into the brain. This destroys the dopamine-producing neurons, but the effects are instant and short-lived, compared to the slow progressive decline that occurs over decades in people. [Read more…]

For finding better treatments for TB, the computer is mightier than the mouse

13 March 2019

In March of 1882, Robert Koch used tissue from infected guinea pigs to show that the lung disease tuberculosis (TB) is caused by the organism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. At that time, TB was a constant presence in the population, infecting between 70 to 90 percent of people in urban areas of Europe and North America. Nowadays, although the mortality due to TB has reduced in developed countries, it remains a huge health issue and March is recognised globally as TB Awareness Month. In fact, the disease is still the leading cause of infection-related death worldwide, with up to one-third of the human population having latent TB.

Mice are resistant to TB, so in nature, you would never find a mouse with TB infection. Sadly, this does not save them from a life of laboratory experimentation. To get around their natural immunity, researchers manipulate mouse genetics, deleting mouse genes, and sometimes adding human genes, in order to create a TB-susceptible mouse. Whilst these manipulations are designed to make it easier for researchers to infect mice with different human diseases, this approach doesn’t necessarily create accurate and predictive models of the human condition. There is also huge wastage in this approach. For example, for one study requiring 50 genetically defined animals, 84 female “breeder mice” are used to produce a total of 400 animals, of which 350 are simply discarded and killed, being surplus to requirements. This over-breeding to generate animals with the requisite, manipulated genetics is not isolated to TB research – it is a strategy used throughout medical research. [Read more…]

Modelling the human heart: Predictive models for cardiotoxicity testing

22 February 2019

What do self-driving cars, solar airplanes and renewable energy have in common with the human heart? At first thought, not a great deal, yet a recent scientific endeavour called the Living Heart Project has brought together experts in engineering, aeronautics and energy to produce a sophisticated new model of the human heart for use in medical research. This 21^st century approach to understanding heart disease is vitally important and of particular relevance in February – American Heart Month. Heart failure is a serious problem affecting 26 million people worldwide; heart disease causes 1 in 4 deaths annually in America. It can occur at any age, but becomes more common as we get older. Plus, different forms of heart failure affect men and women differently and require different treatments.

Efforts like the Living Heart Project are long overdue, survival rates for heart failure patients have not improved since the 1990s. Despite a half-century of research funding and countless rodent experiments, translation of animal data to people has been poor to non-existent. Not surprising perhaps, considering the differences in size and development, heart rates, oxygen consumption, contractility, protein expression, and stem cell populations between humans and rodents. Calls for ‘improved animal models’ for human heart disease favored larger animals – such as dogs – due to closer resemblance of cardiac physiology between dogs and humans (compared to rats and humans). Experimental induction of heart failure in the young, healthy dogs employed as models is severe – often requiring complex, extensive surgery – and distressing. In addition to these ethical concerns, there are scientific reasons to move away from canine models of heart failure – the collateral coronary circulation in dogs creates inconsistency and heterogeneity in the response to myocardial lesions which make comparison of post-injury outcomes difficult. [Read more…]

EU ORCHID project interim roadmap lays out the route for organs-on-chips

18 January 2019

Organ-on-Chip in Development (ORCHID) is a European Horizon 2020 project that aims to capitalise on the innovative technology that is organ-on-chip, or OoC. The ORCHID consortium is made up of seven partners from six European countries and was launched in 2017 with the overall aim of building a network of OoC stakeholders, including academic, research, industrial and regulatory institutions, in order to move OoCs from laboratories to a more global awareness and utility.

We are in the midst of a ‘drugs drought‘, which means there could be no more new, approved compounds by around 2070 unless we radically alter the current drug discovery paradigm. Using animals as models of human disease for predicting safety and efficacy of novel drugs has proven to be time consuming, costly and about as effective as tossing a coin—with failure rates running as high as 99.6 % for some conditions. While the reasons underpinning the failure of new chemical entities to reach the clinic, and successfully remain there, are complex and multi-factorial, there is no doubt that one of the greatest limitations for identifying new therapeutics for human diseases is the deficiencies in the animals employed/manipulated as models of the human condition. [Read more…]

Launch of Indian Society for Alternatives to Animal Experiments

14 January 2019

In November 2018, India joined other innovative economies working to replace the use of animals in laboratory experiments with the launch of the Indian Society for Alternatives to Animal Experiments (ISAAE) during the country’s second national conference on alternatives in New Delhi. Humane Society International, founder of the BioMed21 Collaboration, was a lead sponsor and keynote speaker at the conference, which created a platform for national and international scientists from various backgrounds to engage in discussions pertaining to the present and future of alternatives to the use of animals in research and testing.

The chief guest of the event, Dr Renu Swarup, Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, graced the inaugural ceremony with an encouraging speech for the audience, comprised of scientists and students alike. The informative keynote lecture by HSI Vice President of Research & Toxicology, Troy Seidle, kickstarted the event, focusing on the need for human biology-based pathways to study human diseases and test new products, and exploring the vision of expediting 21st century science through the BioMed21 Collaboration. [Read more…]