• Question: Do animals come into the stem cells part of science?

    Asked by cookiejayden to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Hi cookiejayden,

      All animals have stem cells in them just like us and we can get embryonic stem cells from the embryos of other animals just like we can get human embryonic stem cells. So, yes animals do come into the stem cell science.

      A lot of researchers work with mouse embryonic stem cells to learn more about them and then us scientists that work with human embryonic stem cells will often use work from mouse embryonic stem cells to have a guess at what might happen in human embryonic stem cells because they are so similar. A big difference between work with mouse and human embryonic stem cells is the ethics of what research can be done with these. Scientists are allowed to inject mouse embryonic stem cells that have been altered in some way, into an embryo to produce a new mouse, but scientists can’t do that type of thing with humans.

      Also, work with animals is important for learning how to grow organs for transplant using stem cells. Scientists have grown hearts and kidneys to transplant into rats, but will not be allowed to grow human organs for transplant until they know that they can make useful transplants that work in animals. This animal testing makes sure that our medicine and surgery is good. This is to stop doctors giving patients treatments that don’t work. Without work in animals, stem cell science would not be nearly as advanced as it is.

    • Photo: Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan

      Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Hi cookiejayden,
      Animals certainly have stem cells and some people do use these to learn more about cells in general. I do for example use mouse embryonic stem cells to learn more about the protein I am interested in.

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Personally I don’t work on animals but there are times when we unfortunately have to use them. It’s not something we take lightly and there are lots of rules in place to make sure we don’t use too many and that we do everything in as humane a way as possible. The reason we use them is because for some experiments we have to see how the cells behave in a body, before we can go ahead and try the treatments in people. There are a lot of ways to replace animal experiments and that is great, in fact one of the aims of some stem cell research is to make replacement experiments so that animals don’t need to be used, but unfortunately that is not always possible. There are some great initiatives like the NC3Rs whose aim is to replace animal experiments where possible and I think this is a really good thing.

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