New research method reduces use of animals for testing
University of Otago student Hayley Stent has won the Otago Medical School Research Society’s latest annual writing prize. Miss Stent (22) , who won the $500 first prize, is a bachelor of science with honours student in the Otago pharmacology and toxicology department. Her essay, published below, is titled ‘‘Less Animal Testing and More Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Research’’.
EVERY year in New Zealand, there are around 141 new cases of spinal cord injury. This means that each of these individuals have lost the ability to move with the ease that most of us take for granted.
Once damaged, the spinal cord is not able to heal properly, this is the reason why spinal cord injury is so serious. There are millions of nerve fibres, called axons, running up and down the spinal cord, providing a highway for information to travel to and from the brain. When these axons are severed, as they are in spinal cord injury, it is incredibly hard for them to reconnect. This means that the person only regains a limited amount of movement and sensation.
However, there is some hope. Most of the processes going on after the injury are now understood well by scientists, which means that treatments that will improve the outlook for patients are on the horizon.
This then presents a new issue; how do we find and test these new treatments?
Unfortunately, as with most biomedical research, the taboo topic of animal testing rears its ugly head.
The use of animals in research is an incredibly controversial area, especially now with technology advancing so fast, we have many other options. On the other hand, this type of research reaches a point where the use of animals is unavoidable as the technology we have available still cannot replicate the injury with enough accuracy.
Though, on the bright side there are now many more ways we can reduce, refine and replace the use of animals before it is absolutely necessary to do so.
I have a deep, personal interest in spinal cord injury and trying to find a treatment that can improve the lives of patients and help them walk again. But as an animal lover and a vegan, I am confronted with an ethical dilemma regarding the use of animals in this research.
So I decided to find a way around this and started to look into other models of spinal cord injury.
There is a new model known as an ex vivo model, which essentially means that segments of spinal cord are isolated, kept alive and used to simulate the injury without having to injure any animals.
Researchers can keep these segments alive for up to six weeks and have already started to test treatments for spinal cord injury on them. Additionally, animal use can be minimised further, as these spinal cords can be donated from animals used for other purposes.
Although the use of this ex vivo model tantalises us with the promise of reduced animal testing, there are some issues with its ability to mimic a spinal cord injury that occurs in people.
After injury there is a huge amount of inflammation that causes even more damage than what is caused by the accident. Also, a scar develops over time and acts like a barricade that prevents any damaged axons from healing and getting through the scar to the other side.
Just like everything in science, it gets even more complicated.
A major cause of this inflammation and scarring is white blood cells that are not present in the spinal cord until after the injury. As the ex vivo model is based on removing the spinal cord, it made me wonder: can it still show this inflammation and scarring?
This ex vivo spinal cord injury model is already making a massive difference in reducing the number of animals used in this research, which is very important.
However, my concern is that if this ex vivo model is not able to show the inflammation and scarring, then some treatments that look like they are helping in the model, may not help when they are tested in animals or people.
For that reason, I am looking at whether the model actually does show the inflammation and scarring. If it does not, I will try adding white blood cells to increase the inflammation and scarring, so that this model can be used even more effectively.
This would mean that when a treatment seems effective in this ex vivo model it will be more likely to show benefits in animals and then in human patients.
This is incredibly important, as if my research is successful, it will speed up the process of developing treatments for spinal cord injury and means that these treatments will be helping patients considerably sooner.
❛ As an animal lover and a vegan, I am confronted with an ethical dilemma regarding the use of animals in this research