WIKIMEDIA, RAMAFor the last century, the mouse has been the leading subject for the evaluation of potential pharmaceutical agents. Small, prolific, and armed with a robust immune system, the rodent seemed the ideal focus for biological experimentation. Over the years, many pure genetic mouse strains have been developed with high susceptibility to various ailments, including cancer, obesity, and Alzheimer’s, which researchers have used to interrogate disease mechanisms and immune dysfunction.
Yet a 75-million-year evolutionary gulf separates us from our murine relatives, and after years of investigation, countless dissimilarities have come to light. There is currently much debate concerning the limitations of the mouse as a model of human disease. Nevertheless, most believe that the mouse has not been totally misleading. In the case of the immune system, for example, investigators at the Broad Institute at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology determined that some 80 percent of gene expression patterns were the same in the mouse and human.
This past June, experts from around the world gathered at the World Pharma Congress, held in Philadelphia, to discuss the design of more accurate and precise preclinical cancer models. A major concern has been that human tumors ...
