The transparent mouse that could improve cancer drug trials Science & Health

One new style which consists of the examination Transparent mice MEET could dramatically improve testing of new cancer drugs, as the innovation makes it possible to find tumors that were previously too small to detect.

Prof. Ali Erturk of the Helmholtz Research Center Munich in Germanydiscovered how to make the mouse transparent in 2018. Since then, the method has been perfected and detailed in an article published on Monday (7/10) In the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.

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Creating the translucent mouse required removing all the fat and pigment from its carcass through a chemical process. The guinea pig ends up looking like a slightly floppy, transparent plastic toy.

The team is also using chemicals to highlight specific tissues that, with the new method, can be observed under microscopes and imaging tests in great detail.

In one of the first applications, the team detected precancerous tumors in the early stages of formation.

“MRI and CT scans will only show large tumors. They show us single-cell tumors, which these scans can’t do at all,” Erturk notes.

“Current drugs prolong life for a few years and then the cancer comes back. This is because of the development process [dos tratamentos] It did not include eliminating these small tumors, which were not visible at all.”

The drugs are usually first tested on mice, and the effects of the treatment are followed using conventional imaging tests.

In the method Erturk devised, only dead rats can be analyzed — and only some guinea pigs need transparency.

The team also stores images of the subjects in a 3D format. This way, researchers who need to analyze different parts of the animal or want to conduct new experiments can access a library of previous images, rather than using another mouse.

Professor Erturk believes that this technology can reduce the use of laboratory animals ten times.

Cancer Research UK, an entity dedicated to cancer research in the UK, said the new technology had “a lot of potential”.

Rupal Mistry, director of research information at the entity, explained the enthusiasm.

“Although researchers can only use this technique to examine the cadavers of dead mice, it can tell us a lot about how cancer develops in the early stages of the disease. Also, being able to visualize tumors throughout the body will give researchers a greater understanding of the impact of drugs. And different treatments,” says Mistry.

The method is currently being tested against cancer, but it is believed that it could be adapted to study many other diseases, allowing researchers to see things they have never seen before.

Mice studies are often the starting point for learning about processes in the human body, but the new technique can be used in any animal.

This process could eventually be applied to humans, making our tissues and organs transparent – but this is unlikely, because no medical research advances seem possible at this point from an already formed human body.

Biomedical doctor Nana Jane Tchibambi of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK is excited that the new technique can be used to study how cells develop in the human body. Currently, you need very thin layers of tissue to study under a microscope.

“[O método] It has the potential to identify new cells, tissues and diseases that will really help us understand disease progression.”

His team leader, Physician and Professor Mudhalifa Hanifa, is producing an online atlas of every cell in the human body. Hanifa says the scanning technology developed by Erturk’s team will be useful for all kinds of medical research.

“Without a doubt, it will speed up the pace of medical research,” says the doctor.

“The combination of these cutting-edge technologies and the construction of an atlas of human cells will undoubtedly completely revolutionize medicine.”