I have always been amazed at what benefits animals had for science. Although I still don’t know if I side with people using animals for research; I sure wouldn’t want research to be done on me first; as selfish as that may seem. However, I think I first became interested in the benefits animals provided for science when cloning first came onto the scene. Although the first cloned animal was a tadpole, Dolly was of great interest for me. Now cloning animal genomes has been taken to dogs and horses, and even human genomes are underway.

However, probably the most common animals used within laboratories are mice and rats. I remember I couldn’t read a press release without it talking about the success drugs have had within animal models, which were usually mice/rats. Of course there were the occasional zebrafish models and monkey models, however, mice/rats take the cake. Now, a new rat is being introduced into laboratories around the world for life science studies: introducing the naked mole rat.

These cute, buck teethed, furless rodents have been used in various research studies from pain research, stroke research, cancer research, and aging research.

While being sensitive to touch, hence they have no fur, naked mole rats are insensitive to pain. A research from the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago found that these shrewish rodents lack Substance P, which is a chemical that causes burning sensations for mammals. This makes the rodent insensitive to acid, and numb to foods like chili peppers and lemon juice. The researchers are hoping that this new knowledge, on top of previous studies and knowledge, may lead to new insights into inflammatory pain and inflammatory disease.

These rodents are also being used in cancer research by the Univ. of Rochester. While naked mole rats can live up to 30 years, researchers at the Univ. of Rochester claim that they have never been found with cancerous tumors. In fact, the rodent can never really contract the deadly disease thanks to a gene called p27, which according to the researchers “human and other animals have, and which prevents cells from crowding together,” and a gene called p16. The p16 gene prevents cells from multiplying.

Since cancer can obviously find its way around the p27 gene, since humans and most animals can contract the disease, the p16 gene forms a double barrier for the rodent, allowing it to withstand the disease. These naked mole rats have become a staple in cancer research for this reason in hopes to find answers to genetic questions that one day may suppress the disease for humans.

Also in recent news, these blind creatures hold clues to surviving strokes. It turns out that these adorable, furless rodents’ brain tissue can withstand extreme hypoxia, according to a press release issued by the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, for periods exceeding a half-hour. Studying African naked mole rats that live tight, foul areas underground, John Larson and Thomas Park found the creatures to show systemic hypoxia adaptations, which they believe to be a result of evolutionary adaptations for surviving in a chronically low-oxygen environment. This importance of this study is that these tiny creatures may help these researchers identify the mechanisms that allow longer neuronal survival after such accidents or medical emergencies, which may suggest ways to avoid permanent human brain damage.

All these research studies, plus the fact that naked mole rats live 10 times longer than any other laboratory mice or rat makes them valuable to the field of science.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

- Lindsay Hock, Managing Editor, R&D