Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/04/02
By: Liu Lee-jung and Chung Yu-chen
Taipei, April 2 (CNA) The National Laboratory Animal Center (NLAC) announced Monday
Image taken from the NLAC website
that it has successfully developed “mouse avatars,” a method to pre-test cancer treatments in mice and guide doctors in tailoring treatment options for each patient.
To treat cancer with more precision, the NLAC first developed mice with “advanced severe immunodeficiency”(ASI) in 2015, which provided a vivo model — one that takes place outside a patient’s body — to study human tumor tissues, according to NLAC project manager Wang Jui-ling (王瑞鈴).
This year, Wang said, researchers created “mouse avatars” by implanting tumors from different cancer patients into a set of ASI mice, then waited for the tumors to grow and tested what they felt were the optimal treatments for those mice.
The process, in which an individual’s tumor was grown and treated in a specific mouse, gave physicians the chance to see which drugs might work best in treating each patient’s condition, she said. [FULL STORY]
