Creating a "Humanized" Mouse For Better Research

Animal models have long been used for preclinical studies on the effectiveness and problems with treatments and drugs, but diseases such as malaria and hepatitis B and C, which lead to 1.5 million deaths yearly, have yet to be effectively studied and modeled. This is because a lot of the ill effects in the liver stem from the human body's immune response to the virus. This necessitates the creation of more advanced models, those that better resemble human conditions. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies recently overcame hurdles to creating a "humanized" mouse, one that housed human liver cells and a human immune system. Their research mainly involved creating mice with livers that could be obliterated and engrafted with human liver cells that would proliferate enough to be used in studies. Although less complete, efforts at suppressing the mouse immune system and injecting human immune stem cells have been partially successful as well. Despite advances, challenges such as cost of materials and questions as to how well these mice will truly model the human systems have yet to be answered.

I find this work very interesting as it involves both genetically engineering the mice and modifying them after as well as creating new and improved methods for studying treatments for diseases that have otherwise been unsuccessfully improved. Developments in this area have potential to save lives and improve areas of research rapidly and without having to change the way things are currently done.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=homo-musculus-researchers-create