Seven Little Piggies Make History

Pigs are offering new possibilities for studying Alzheimer’s disease

By SciIll Staff Posted 12.09.2008 at 6:37 pm 2 Comments

Making Transgenic Pigs

The researchers achieved two firsts: Their transgenic pigs are the first to carry a human Alzheimer’s gene, and they’re the first pigs produced by a relatively new method called handmade cloning.

A Pig in Hand: A researcher holds one of the pigs that may further our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease. Neils Aage Skovbo/Scanpix

To introduce the disease gene, Jørgensen’s team first removed a fibroblast from an adult female pig. The Alzheimer’s gene was then inserted into the fibroblast. Once the scientists determined that the Alzheimer’s gene was active inside the cell, they allowed it to multiply. They then prepared the pig ova—the cell that will eventually grow into the piglet—to accept the fibroblast’s genetic material. To do this, Gábor Vajta, a cloning expert and an affiliate professor at the University of Copenhagen, used a method he developed in 2001. The key: using enzymes to dissolve the zona pellucida, or outer membrane, of the egg. This allowed the scientists to easily manipulate the egg cell’s components by hand, rather than using micromanipulators, tiny instruments used in traditional cloning [for more on this process see “An Easier Way to Clone” on the last page].

Vajta then fused the fibroblast carrying the Alzheimer’s gene with the egg cell, which was electrically and chemically stimulated to ultimately become a blastocyst, an embryonic phase. The team produced 40 to 50 identical blastocysts using Alzheimer’s fibroblasts that had multiplied from the original. Veterinarians implanted these blastocysts into a sow.

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2 Comments

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Chipper Smoltz

12/10/08 at 3:23 am

Maybe this is one of those areas or diseases where nano-technology could help... maybe tackling it with the idea of treatment when the disease is already in the latter stages then attempting to cure it is not the way to treat it... maybe if early symptoms have been detected (the disease is still at its infancy or beginning to occur, then maybe something could be done to prevent it from rapidly progressing or totally halting it).

Since these "plaques" tend to form clumps in the brain, maybe some sort of scanner could be used and mandated for people at a certain age (for Alzheimers due to old age) or from childhood (for those types that are not brought about by old age). It's a protein right? Am thinking of some way of halting the protein build up that causes the clumps by some chemical that would leave the other types of protein untouched but would remove the clumps. Maybe the answer is just so simple that we fail to discover because we need a certain "paradigm shift" on things. Just like the movie Lorenzo's Oil which was based on real life, I believe, maybe the cure or solution would be something like that, something so simple.

It's like there's an article before here in Popular Science wherein they featured nano-technology delivered medicine that's supposed to eliminate cancer cells but leaves good cells unharmed. I dunno much about biological stuff, but I hope that this would help.

In addition, if there would be resveratrol pills in the near future, then maybe this cou

Link to this comment

Chipper Smoltz

12/10/08 at 3:26 am

(Sorry my comment got messed up...)

In addition, if there would be resveratrol pills in the near future, then maybe this could help as well for those cases wherein the Alzheimer's is brought about by old age.

You can do it guys....so many beautiful minds wasted by this disease. Good luck guys, and please keep us posted on this.

Btw, I search for some health news at www.worldhealth.net

Unfortunately they don't have a place for comments... some of the stuff I don't understand, but they have articles on radical treatments (that works) for certain types of diseases as well as prevention, diet, supplements, etc.

Thanks Popular Science for allowing me to share the website. Please visit it guys and gals if you have some time.

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