5 November 2019
Rats jammed face first into what look like small milk bottles, no room to move, no option to even turn their heads. The rats in glass cylinders are arranged rows deep, screwed into a huge central metal cylinder that will provide a constant stream of cigarette smoke, directed into their faces in what is known as the ‘nose-only’ exposure technique. Mice contained in small plastic boxes for hours on end, flooded with a constant stream of cigarette smoke at a rate of 10 cigarettes per hour, with no break. This is the ‘whole body’ exposure model. Dogs trapped, immobilised, their noses strapped into masks, their eyes just visible peeking above. Or how about mice, with patches shaved on their backs, cigarette tar painted onto the bare skin until tumours appear? Tobacco distillate rubbed into a rabbit’s skin? The toxic compounds we now associate with smoking-related disease fed to rats until they develop fatal oesophageal tumours? These approaches have all been used to examine the effects of cigarettes, and shockingly, many are still used today.
Experiments rubbing concentrated cigarette smoke extracts into animal skin were carried out for many years in attempts to discover whether cigarettes were harmful. Careers were made or destroyed here; the scientists using strains of mice that did not get cancer received further funding to continue down an essentially blind alley, whilst the researchers using animal models which showed that smoking could cause cancer were not funded again. I think that we are probably all aware of this back story; tobacco companies accused of not revealing all their data indicating that cigarettes were really harmful, and groups like the Guest Choice Network (now Center for Consumer Freedom), who were paid to try and stop smoking bans, but part of the issue here was that cigarettes were really not that harmful… if you were a rat or a mouse. This is still a huge problem with research using animals; animal models do not mimic the severity of (smoking-related lung) disease as we see it in people. [Read more…]
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease comprises a range of conditions, ranging from the uncomplicated – hepatic steatosis – to the more severe hepatocellular carcinoma. Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in which there is hepatitis and liver cell damage, in addition to fat build-up. NASH may lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer and affects millions of people worldwide. To date, no drugs have been approved to cure NASH and the major obstacles in the development of high-potential anti-NASH drug candidates are the identification of possible drug targets and the lack of adequate NASH models.
Our October edition of Research Round-up has collected three very different advances in our understanding of human organ systems.
Intermittent or chronic nausea. Bloating. Burning, shearing or gnawing abdominal pain. A feeling of fullness after eating just a few bites. Poor appetite and weight loss. These symptoms add up to the distressing condition known as 
This edition of research round-up reports on very different aspects of applying human-focused technologies and strategies. The paper by Velasco et al. entitled 
