Better Mice, Better Our Understanding of Cancer

All new potential drugs or therapies for cancer, and for a lot of other diseases too, actually, go through three stages of testing, ranging from in vitro simulations, to testing the product on animals and, finally moving up to clinical tests. The results that science teams get from their studies on mice are crucial for optimizing drugs or other therapies for human use. Better mouse experiments lead to better clinical trial results and many resources saved.
 

The ways in which mouse tests are set up are crucial to obtaining and interpreting conclusive results. The number of the test subjects as well as their randomization make for solid statistical data on whatever drug is being tested. Preparing the mice for therapy application is also crucial. Living and feeding conditions must be absolutely identical for both the test and the control groups.
 

Genetically engineering mice, so that they would closely resemble our genetic make-up, is no easy task. Nevertheless, especially when dealing with genetics, every piece of information needs to be analyzed and the roles of each RNA strand deciphered, so that scientists could be sure that everything is working as it should be. Engineering is very dangerous, because, at any time, a mutation could change some genetic features that might be crucial to the experiment.
 

National Cancer Institute expert Melinda Hollingshead, D.V.M., Ph.D, says that hastily-designed tests could lead to poor, scientifically-verifiable results, which could, in turn, jeopardize the lives of the humans entering clinical test trials. Even if this doesn't happen, misinterpretations in reading the results drugs generate in mice could halt medical progress and delay important breakthroughs.
 

"The conclusions drawn from a series of studies are only as good as the data on which they are based. The impact of high-quality experimental design, methodology, and data interpretation cannot be overstated. Along with a savings in animals, there will likely be a concomitant savings in costs and time, contributing to an overall reduction in drug development costs," Hollingshead says.