New stem cell research could make lab mice redundant
Dr Subramanian has been awarded a major three year grant by the National Centre for Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to study ALS, a form of motor neurone disease in which the nerve cells that control the muscles die. This currently incurable condition causes patients to lose movement in muscles, affecting breathing and eventually causing death. Dr Subramanian will be making iPS cells from the skin cells of patients suffering from ALS to study the genes that are thought to cause the disease.
She said: “These are exciting times for stem cell research and there is tremendous potential in the iPS cell technology both for medical applications and in basic biology. This technology will not only help understand the mechanisms underlying the disease, but will also reduce the numbers of animals used in research. There is a real need to develop alternative methods for studying these diseases that are more robust and better simulate how the disease develops in humans.”
The grant will fund a teaching replacement for Dr Subramanian, allowing her to focus on her research, and a research assistant to work on the project. It will also fund a state-of-the-art high power microscope that will allow the researchers to observe the movements and growth of neurones in real time.
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