Experimental Models Cont. Flashcards
What are the advantages of flies and worms as animal models? 6
Cheap No ethics Rapid Breeding Easy genetic manipulation Innate immunity High throughput
What are the disadvantages of flies and worms as animal models? 3
No adaptive immunity
Small - hard to do surgeries
Limited reagents
What type of immunity do fish have (zebrafish)?
COMPLETE
Adaptive and innte
Young zebrafish are…
transparent
What are the advantages of fish models? 4
Cheap
Visualize process in translucent animal
Rapid breeding
Innate and adaptive
What are the disadvantages of fish models? 4
Aquatic
Hard for behavioral studies
Non-classic immune system
Limited reagents
What model is used in the vast majority of research today?
Rodents
What type of immune system do rodents have?
Fairly close to people
both
What are the 4 advantages of rodents?
Have an immune system close to humans
Convenient size
Genetically pliable
Stricly control breeding
What are you able to study with rodents?
Disease at the organism and the molecular level
What are rodents used for?
Infection healing Immunization Autoimmunity Transmission
What is the drawback to rodent models?
They are not human
How do you choose a model? 3
Determine the specific question
Choose a model that most closely parallels humans for that single aspect of interest
Avoid overinterpreting or generalizing findings as an attempt to explain human disease
Vertebrates require approval from…
An institutional animal ethics committee
What is the ethics committee made up of?
Researchers, vets, and ppl of the public
Before publication and funding what do all journals/grants require?
Ethics approval
What are the 3 Rs
Reduce (as few animals as possible)
Replace (w/ lower organisms) fish w/ fly
Refine (get more data out of each, improve technique to min. discomfort)
If animals don’t completely model humans - how can we improve the model? 3
Humanized mice
Transfer human cells into a recipient animal
Use humans…
What are human model past wrongs?
Jenner (forcibly vax and challenging w/ disease)
Guatemalan syphilis study
Tuskegee syphilis studies
Prisoner studies
What are the advantages on paper with prisoner studies?
Repay debt to society Higher than avg of certain diseases Access to elevated health care More minority pop. Ability to follow up
What are the 4 issues with human subjects?
Freedom
Informed consent
Privacy
Incentive
What two types of studies can we do with humans?
Observational
Interventional
What are observational studies?
No impact on day to day life
Not altering health/treatment
Take blood from someone at the hospital already giving blood
Interventional studies
More controversial
Testing something
Always requires informed consent
What are the stages of interventional studies?
Phase 1-4
Phase 1
Safety and efficacy
10-12 patients
Phase 2
Larger, efficacy
Phase 3
This is where it gets approved
Very large, efficacy, side effects, comparison to current drugs
Phase 4
Following the drug after release to market
Looking for rare events
What is the ultimate experiment?
Prospectively vaccinate a huge number of people
Follow ppl for a very long time
Compare infection rates of vax and unvax
Crazy $$$
