The transparent mouse used in the fight against cancer – 07/10/2023 – Science

A new method that consists of examining dead transparent mice can significantly improve tests with new drugs against cancer, since the innovation makes it possible to find tumors that were previously too small to be detected.

Professor Ali Ertürk, from the Helmholtz Munich research center, in Germany, discovered how to make a mouse transparent in 2018. Since then, the method has been perfected and detailed in an article published this Monday (10) in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.

Creating the transparent mouse involves removing all the fat and pigment from its corpse through a chemical process. The guinea pig ends up looking like a slightly flexible, clear plastic toy.

The team also uses chemicals to highlight specific tissues that, with the new method, can be observed under microscopes and imaging tests in great detail.

In one of the first applications, the team detected cancerous tumors in the early stages of formation.

“MRI and tomography exams would only show large tumors. Ours show tumors in a single cell, which these exams can’t do at all”, points out Ertürk.

“Current drugs prolong life for a few years and then the cancer comes back. This is because the development process [dos tratamentos] never included the elimination of these small tumors, which were never visible.”

Drugs are usually first tested in mice, and treatment effects are followed using conventional imaging tests.

In the method created by Ertürk, only dead mice can be analyzed — and only some guinea pigs need to be transparent.

The team is also storing images of the subjects in 3D format. In this way, researchers who need to analyze different parts of the animal or want to carry out new experiments can access a library with previous images, instead of using another mouse.

Professor Ertürk believes that the technique can reduce the use of laboratory animals by ten times.

Cancer Research UK, an entity dedicated to research on cancer in the United Kingdom, said that the new technique has “a lot of potential”.

Rupal Mistry, research information manager at the entity, explained the enthusiasm.

“Although researchers can only use the technique to examine dead mouse bodies, it can tell us a lot about how cancer develops in the early stages of the disease. Being able to visualize tumors throughout the body will also give researchers a greater understanding of the impact of different medications and treatments,” says Mistry.

The method is currently tested against cancer, but it is believed that it could be adapted to study several other diseases, allowing researchers to see things never seen before.

Mouse studies are often the starting point for learning about processes in the human body, but the new technique can be used in any animal.

The process could eventually be applied to humans, making our tissues and organs transparent—but that’s unlikely, because there doesn’t seem to be advances in medical research possible at this stage of an already formed human body.

Biomedical doctor Nana-Jane Chipampe of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK is excited about the prospect of using the new technique to study how cells develop in the human body. Currently, she needs very thin layers of tissue to study under a microscope.

“[O método] It has the potential to identify new cells, tissues and diseases that will really help us understand disease development.”

Their team leader, physician and professor Muzlifah Haniffa, is producing an online atlas of every cell in the human body. Haniffa says the scanning technique developed by Ertürk’s team will be useful for all types of medical research.

“Without a doubt, it will speed up the pace of medical research”, says the doctor.

“Combining these cutting-edge technologies and building the atlas of human cells will undoubtedly completely revolutionize medicine.”