EARA News Digest 2024 - Week 16
Welcome to your Monday morning update, from EARA, on the latest news in biomedical science, policy and openness on animal research.
This week: Mouse insights into stomach diseases; Swiss university 3Rs hub; Mice-organoid study for kidney disease |
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Insights into mouth-stomach connection for gastrointestinal diseases
The development of the connection between the food pipe and stomach has been described in a study using mice and lab-grown tissues, paving the way for a better understanding and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases.
The research, led by the University of Würzburg, and also involving EARA members Charité Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, all Germany, explored the point where the food pipe meets the stomach (called the gastroesophageal junction).
This is a region that can be susceptible to disease, such as cancer, due to triggers like stress, alcohol and obesity.
By tracking the individual cells of mice from before birth to adulthood, and with the help of lab-grown ‘organoids’ (derived from tissue from both mice and humans), the team demonstrated how the gastroesophageal junction develops at the cellular level, as well as how the cells communicate with each other.
This knowledge can then be applied to the study of diseases that start in or affect this region, which “opens up new avenues for research” into treating these diseases, said Cindrilla Chumduri (then at Würzburg and now at Aarhus University, Denmark).
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Swiss university hub to improve research animal welfare
ETH Zurich has recently launched an initiative that brings together its activities and knowledge on the 3Rs principles, to establish effective ways to improve the welfare of animals used in research.
The goal of the 3Rs Hub is to develop new technologies at the university that reduce the use of animals while minimising the burden on the animals themselves, with the idea that these methods will then be shared with other research groups.
The Hub will unify the 3Rs efforts of individual laboratories, providing researchers with a central point of contact for accessing 3Rs information and guidance, exchanging ideas and best practices, as well as offering training.
It is attached to ETH Zurich’s Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience group due to the group’s experience in implementing the 3Rs, for example through a project that is using AI to monitor the behaviour of rodents from their home cage.
Johannes Bohacek, who heads the group, said: “Now, with the new Hub, we’re intensifying the exchange of ideas as well as pooling and imparting 3R knowledge and expertise. And we’re identifying tailored solutions to make research as comfortable as possible for laboratory animals in many fields.”
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Mice with human cells shed light on kidney disease
Researchers in Singapore have made advances in understanding kidney disease by using 'organoids', grown from human kidney cells, and transplanted into live mice.
Polycystic kidney disease (PKD), affecting approximately 1 in 1000 people worldwide, leads to the formation of fluid-filled cysts and kidney malfunction, necessitating dialysis or kidney transplantation. These treatments greatly affect quality of life or come with high costs and potential complications.
To address this, a team of researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) developed so-called kidney organoids, grown from the skin cells of PKD patients, and then successfully transplanted them into mice.
This allowed the team to look at the disease's progression and interaction within a living organism, leading to the discovery that enhancing a specific metabolic process in cells could reduce cyst formation in PKD.
Foo Jia Nee, one of the lead researchers at NTU (pictured, front left), said: “The similarity between the disease manifestation observed in our engrafted mini kidney model and the real-life experiences of polycystic kidney disease patients suggest that [this approach] could be beneficial in studying the disease and a useful tool to test new treatments.”
This research – published in Cell Stem Cell – lays the groundwork for further exploration of therapies that enhance this metabolic process, not just for PKD but potentially other genetic and metabolic conditions too. |
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