Mice help the vaccine industry grow

Swiss scientists have created a mouse strain that carries the human immune system. Genetically modified mice without immune systems are injected with cord blood of human stem cells containing stem cells. This is an important progress for the pharmaceutical industry.

Challenge from immunology

All pharmaceutical birth processes are in a dilemma. Drug testing or a therapy on humans is prohibited in pre-clinical studies before proving they are safe or promise treatment for many moral reasons.

Bringing potential treatments from laboratory studies to human clinical trials requires an adventurous jump through an unavoidable vulnerability beyond knowledge. Only a small fraction of the last clinically tested drugs are approved for medical use.

Lab mice are " short-term " pets. In the photo: A hamster cage at the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo: H.Cat)

Meanwhile, other usable tools for preclinical research such as laboratory animals or isolated cells are not always replaceable in tests. Experiments need to be performed on living people.

According to Dr. Richard A. Flavell, president and emeritus professor of Biomedical Sciences - Yale University of Medicine, USA, is concerned with the challenges of immunological research.

Through many stages of evolution, the most common mouse, animal test, has an immune system that has been set up to deal with bacteria and bacteria. They are completely different from the pathogens that humans have. And, as the name suggests, the immune system is not a single part like the liver. It is a multifaceted mechanism distributed throughout the body. Therefore, it is very difficult to compete correctly in a bacterial culture plate.

'You really don't want to study mouse cells; you just want to study on human cells, and basically you study on living organisms, in clinical trials, ' Flavell said. He is also an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Howard Hughes Medical Institute - USA).

However, he stressed that all studies really needed invasive procedures, and therefore could not be safe for human trials. Scientists encounter numerous difficulties to ensure that what they conduct in clinical trials is very safe and will not have adverse effects on patients.

The mouse carries the human immune system

A Swiss laboratory created a bridge for immunologists.

In 2004, BS. Markus G. Manz, along with colleagues at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine, controlled and created a line of mice with an immune system that was still at a primitive but fully functional level in humans .

They injected blood from the umbilical cord stem cells that contained stem cells and other progenitor cells into mice without immune system mutations. Manz's presentation only appeared at the 'Challenges in Global Medicine Challenge - Grand Challenges in Global Health' competition, but it started for funded projects.

Seeing a great potential in combining Manz's technology and his approaches to molecular cells in mice to create new vaccines, Flavell offered to work with Manz and Tarrytown, a branch of Regeneron Pharmacy in New York. They will create a line of mice with a more perfect human immune system.

At the end of June of that year, Flavell received a Grand Challenges good news agreement to sponsor $ 17 million for the project.
'Creating a true human-like immune system will help tests to predict the reaction of the human body. The current experimental animal system cannot do exactly the human immune response. However, we think we understand where the defect is, and are looking for new ways, ' says Flavell.

Experimental mice were genetically engineered to produce different strains.In which many mouse lines carry human disease patterns, for scientists to study and find mechanisms of human pathogenesis.In the photo: Mouse lab for experiment of Department of Biotechnology - Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Sciences.(Photo: H.Cat)

The human immune mouse model will allow scientists to examine human vaccines in mice, including vaccines for the prevention of HIV. This is a vaccine that previously could not be tested on mice because they are usually not infected by this virus. But not only that. With this mouse model, people can test different types of research.

According to Dr. Elizabeth E. Eynon, a scientist working at Flavell's lab, this mouse model will help clinical trials have more effective results.

'The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will require that we conduct phase I and phase II trials as much as possible. But failures at these stages will decrease if we show safety and efficacy earlier, 'said Elizabeth E. Eynon.

" Massacres " in the laboratory

Over 99% of the mice fed for genetic tests were killed.

British biologists have expressed concern about the rapid increase in the number of lab rats being extensively killed by genetic engineering engineers. While according to New Scientist magazine, only 1 - 10% of the mice successfully combined the DNA gene genetically injected into the embryo by the experimentalists. These mice are not killed.

Talking to New Scientist magazine, a senior animal expert at a British university, said killing too many animals made her extremely miserable.'I feel exhausted both physically and emotionally. And I think it's important to let others understand what we're feeling. '

Lab animals must be destroyed regularly. Although the number of experimental animals used in scientific experiments decreased, the number of transgenic mice increased.

In 1990, about 50,000 experimental processes in the United Kingdom used transgenic mice. That number was 300,000 in 1997.

Scientists have created transgenic mice to unlock the secrets of genetic genetic development. Thereby, they can study human diseases on animal models. Many biologists believe that this technology will bring significant progress in the medical field.

The Office of Interior Control of Experiments on Animals in the UK said that 'the number of animals wasted' must be in official statistics. But according to observers, many numbers have been omitted. 'It is very difficult to give exact numbers. I think many people can destroy them massively but not statistically, 'said David Morton, manager of pharmaceutical ethics management at Birmingham University, in New Scientist magazine.

It is not feasible to try to reuse excess mouse tissues for other tests. Laboratories are scattered everywhere, and work with different timetables.

Until one finds a more reliable method than gene transfer in mice, "massacres" continue to occur in laboratories. In the meantime, BS. Morton believes scientists will have to be more careful when considering mass animal destruction measures that technicians will perform.