Find medicine to cure dengue fever on humanized mice

For a long time, finding a effective medicine to treat dengue is not much progressive and expensive, because many drugs have good effects in the laboratory and on the animal but fail to try. human body, with the main cause of differences in cells.

>>>Breakthrough in finding dengue vaccine

However, this problem may now be overcome after a team of researchers in Singapore found a more effective prototype in the process of making effective dengue medication, mice. carrying human immune cells .

Accordingly, the team implanted human liver stem cells into genetically altered mice to prevent them from producing their own immune cells. These "anthropomorphic mice " were then exposed to dengue virus.

Photo: jesupdoctor.com

Over time, they exhibited four important symptoms of dengue fever in humans, especially a decrease in red blood cells . This is the first time this symptom has been recorded in animals around the world.

This has allowed the team to identify the cause of red blood cell reduction due to a disruption in the production of red blood cells in the bone marrow , thereby finding effective drugs to prevent this condition.

According to scientists, up to 70% of experimental dengue drugs have failed in the experimental stages I and II on the human body, due to being too toxic or ineffective. Even successful laboratory and animal tests cannot be widely applied due to the considerable distance between the experimental environment and the real environment in the human body.

Therefore, the 'anthropomorphic' mouse will be a better test tool that shows how a drug will be effective before being tested in a human body. This will help researchers save costs and time due to less waste of resources. Currently, each drug takes 10-12 years to produce successfully.

Speaking at a press conference on 9/11, Dr. Aishwarya Sridharan, the lead author of the study, said the new group is currently only testing for DEN-2 strains - the most common of the four strains. dengue virus in Singapore. The group is also in the process of discussing with some companies to start testing effective treatments.

The study was published in the context that Singapore is experiencing the second most severe dengue outbreak of the year, with nearly 16,000 cases transmitted since the beginning of the year.