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Question: Do you use animal cells or tissues when trying to find treatments for humans?
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Asked by anon-256638 to Sophie, Sandra, Kimberly, Katy, James_the_Scientist, Hugo on 12 Jun 2020.Question: Do you use animal cells or tissues when trying to find treatments for humans?
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Ellie commented on :
Animal models can be really useful for testing whether a new medicine might work but they are not a guarantee that it will work because animals are still very different to humans and you can get unexpected side effects (this was seen with Thalidomide in the 1950’s and 60’s – it worked in mice but caused birth defects in humans). Human tissues are very useful to use though – it’s the right organism (humans) so you can see exactly how the cells react and behave which can give you a really good idea of if a treatment will work or not – it’s still not as good as seeing a whole organism working though which is why sometimes you use both animal and cell models to try and work out if it’s safe to start testing in humans.
The work I do is a long way from this though – I have collaborators who work with animal models and I have colleagues who work with cells but I work with purified proteins which are much much smaller. Molecules I identify as being potential drugs then get tested by my colleagues.