Seven Little Piggies Make History

Pigs are offering new possibilities for studying Alzheimer’s disease

By SciIll Staff Posted 12.09.2008 at 5:37 pm 2 Comments

Guinea Pigs

If Alzheimer’s progresses in pigs as it does in humans, the animals will give us more than just a better understanding of the disease. Transgenic pigs may also one day become test subjects for Alzheimer’s drugs, helping scientists develop better treatments for humans.

Thanks to their longevity, pigs will ideally provide new possibilities for understanding and treating diseases in which an organ’s function slowly degrades. Currently, pig genetic sequencing is conducted on an experiment-by-experiment basis—a costly, lengthy process. In 2001, scientists began sequencing the complete pig genome which the international Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium expects to publish by early 2010. With both this and the human genome in hand, transgenic pig models are expected to accelerate. According to Jørgensen, drug and treatment testing of human diseases on transgenic pigs and other large-animal models may eventually be the world standard.

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2 Comments

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Chipper Smoltz

12/10/08 at 2:23 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 2:26 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.