“More than 95 percent of oncology drugs entering the clinic fail, due in large part to the lack of predictive animal models in the preclinical development phases”.
Different cancers develop in different animals in different organs. A major problem that has been facing cancer research is that traditionally the cancer cells in non human animals such as mice have been used to test anticancer drugs, but these cancer cells do not accurately model human cancer cells.
To combat this problem scientists from AVEO Pharmaceuticals Inc have using recombinant DNA technology to create suitable ‘cancer biology platforms’. They have employed a tissue recombinant and a gene transduction system insert certain oncogenes (cancer causing genes) into the human tissue in different ways. By doing this they have determined the contribution of these genes to human tumour formation and have essentially created a method to manufacture human cancer cells.
These cells can then be introduced into animal test subjects (such as mice) and then grow the same as they would in a human thus creating predictive animal models.
This research is vital in future cancer research, allowing for accurate testing on test subjects that is representative of humans.
Created by Jon Day,42016485
Article, viewed on 15/4/09 - http://www.physorg.com/news158259376.html
