Wednesday, March 28, 2012

MINI ME MOUSE

Just like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, you too can have your own Mini Me. A mini me mouse that is. However, this Mini Me is not an evil sidekick for diabolical plans, it is created to improve your health. These mice receive a transplant of your tissue and, because their immune systems have been suppressed, they will mimic your immune system. This breakthrough makes it so doctors can take risks and test possible cures on a mouse rather than a patient. Through testing different combinations of drugs on mice, doctors are able to see which combinations work the best without causing harm to the patient themselves. This improves the personalization of treatments. Instead of merely going off of a genetic profile, doctors are able to see the results on an exact replica of your immune system.

A team of Australian researchers were working on a patient with pancreatic cancer, trying to find a treatment for him. They took a piece of the man’s tumor tissue and put it in a mouse whose immune system they had suppressed. On this mouse they tested a drug that had been approved by gene screening but would have been risky to try out on a human patient. Instead of risking further harm to the patient, the researchers tested the drug on the mouse and found that the tumor shrank in the mice that had been treated. This was a huge breakthrough.

The only scientific problem with this discovery is that it sometimes could take too long to create the “avatar” mouse, treat it, analyze the results, and treat the patient. The man studied by the Australians died before treatment could be administered. The obvious social problem with this breakthrough is the attitude of animal rights activists. Animal testing is a very controversial subject and it is very likely that several groups will be against it.

Whether this mouse avatar future actually does come about or not, it is interesting to think about walking into the hospital or your doctor’s office and instead of worrying about which treatment is most likely to succeed, your doctor will simply order a mouse avatar for you. Then the only step is to go home and wait for the test results as with any other health screening.

Posted By Erica Bonnell(1)

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/personal-mouse-avatars-will-model-your-medical-problems

10 comments:

  1. Halfway through the first paragraph all I could picture was the episode of South Park where Mrs. Garrison has a new penis grown on a surrogate mouse... hah. I'm glad to see that this real research isn't quite as silly as that. Animal rights activists will probably have a huge problem with this, but I feel like the rest of the public could definitely get behind this. Sacrificing one tiny mini-me mouse to save a full grown human's life should be an easy decision.

    Rhys Ursuliak

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  2. This method of essentially having your own lab rat is quite compelling. It certainly would speed up the process of establishing what methods of treatment would be most effective for the patient, without the potential side effects. But the question must be asked, does this eliminate the "middle man", of testing potentially harmful drugs? Although this process certainly speeds the process of testing, how certain can scientists be that this process is 100 percent safe and effective in humans with the origin tissue? It just seems like a grey area that should be throughly researched before being implemented. Otherwise, this could be monumental for speeding up treatments.

    Jeff Keating (2)

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    1. Animal rights are annoying sometimes. Why do people feel the need to prolong breakthroughs in the medical field? Human life is more important than a mouse's. How can animal rights activist seriously sit and watch a person die because they wanted to save a rat? I think that mini me rats are a great idea to test treatments.

      Posted by Jen Silva (3)

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    2. I definitely agree that human life is more important than a mouse's life. I think that this is a really neat breakthrough and even if it doesn't become a common practice to make mouse avatars, it's still good to know that science has advanced so far that they can manipulate another creature's body into perfectly resembling and individuals.

      Posted By Erica Bonnell (1)

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  3. This is insane. I love biology and medicine and hope to be a doctor, but these sorts of "breakthroughs" are too much in my opinion. They are too science fiction and teeter on the border of ethics and morality in my opinion. I tend to be conservative, so I naturally lean towards traditional methods and away from the extremes, but I think this would seem crazy to a lot of other people too.

    Posted by Laura Moro (2)

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    1. I knew this was a controversial subject, which is partially why I chose it. I am very much on the side that this is an excellent scientific breakthrough and therefore am very interested in the opposite opinion. Thank you for stating that opinion, I can now sympathize with and understand that opinion even if I still don't necessarily agree.

      Posted by Erica Bonnell (1)

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  4. I like mice, i think they are pretty cute. The debate on the animal testing is pretty extensive though. But i have to agree, more Conservative methods are probably the best when approaching science. Otherwise scientists would be given a bad reputation. While this is a step towards curing some diseases, it might be considered too extreme.

    posted by Doiran Pillari (c)

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  5. What a great article! Medical advances like this one seriously amaze me. This procedure, if completed within the correct amount of time can be life changing. Unknown drugs can be tested more often and without the risk of death for humans. There should be no issue or delay because of the fear of harming animals. If this procedure can find more cures at a quicker pace then it is worth the risk for the mice.

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  6. I am usually very pro animal rights and very anti animal harm. I don't eat meat and don't use leather wherever possible. But I think this is a good breakthrough. Although I don't see animals as "lesser" than people, I do see people that I am close to as closer than people that I do not know. My argument is really that I would gladly have a stranger (in this case a mouse, but I would be fine with a human) die instead of a loved one. But animal rights are a difficult issue and many people don't really reason it out, they simply think with their guts. This will probably cause a good amount of problems in this procedure becoming mainstream.

    Mike Selden (C)

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  7. I think we should look beyond the issue of animal rights here seeing as lab rats are pretty standard at this point. I think it is important to recognize some of the other key issues in this article, such as the 'risks were too great to take on a human' and that the patient died prior to understanding the results of the tests on the rat. The article really makes me think of a new branch of pharmaceutical medicine and how many commercials are out there that list insanely extreme side affects and of all the lawsuits we hear against young prescriptions (i.e. 10 years mature) that were extensively tested on lab mice and rats. These side effects stem from the attempt to treat something but not fully understanding the complex chemical interactions in the body and why medicine administered to pathways affecting the kidney could result in stroke, for example. It makes me apprehensive that the lab rat may then not be able to fully represent the patient on that level if only a part of the disease is being transferred since we just can't capture the entire picture from the patient.

    Karen Melendez

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